fishers, surfers and casters

The first day of the conference I got to see some pretty cool presentations. Jenna Tiitsman, of the Auburn Media Group in New York, showed a review of media reports in the USA on the use of new media in the global south, and uses Myanmar as an example. In these media reports, citizen journalism provides media organisations with information about events in the country when the said organisations cannot enter. However, the journalists themselves are not praised, but the technologies they use. Western media uplifts the technology “given” to the east/south, as a tool for democracy and freedom of speech (Western values). Jenna claims that in an era of post- or neo-colonisation, our media do their best to still lay claim that the prosperity and happiness of the two-thirds world still lies in our hands.

A few days ago Ryan and I left the conference for a squiz at the town. We caught a cab to a shopping district only to find a mall that looks like every other shopping mall in the world, but we took a tour of the nearby streets.

This is a beauty salon, that uses electroshock therapy. I would have gone in and tried it out, but nobody was willing to pay me to do it.

I want a green house like this one. It would match my Matchbox racing car really well.

I was glad to have found this post … I had forgotten what part of the planet I was on.

This day was a privilege. It´s something that is so rare. The day of the Porticus meeting I felt part of a global communion. All us fellows have so different research projects and goals, and work in such diverse settings. Yet we all have the same aspirations, struggles, and understand each other´s commitment and celebrate the achievements. I can´t be arsed going through all the details of everyone´s presentations, but here are some photos, and Lynn Clark can tell you all about what was said.

On the left are Jaime from Chile, Rolando from Peru, Paulo from Brazil and Patricia from Colombia. And below are Milja from Serbia, Lynn, Stewart and David from the USA, Jolyon from the UK, Michele from Israel and Kwabena from Ghana.

I was alerted to this interesting graph on the World Values Survey site at the conference today. Interesting how we always find Oz, NZ and Canada together, and that Oz always appears a little more on the traditional side. Thanks, Johnny.