After yesterday’s post on our first social hour, in which I asked whether a blog aggregator with a set of community guidelines might be one way to help stem the flow of hate speech online, I found (via digiactive.org) an effort—an Arab effort—to do just that. In Bahrain, discussions between Mahmood, a blogger, and his friend Ahmed Al-Aradi, a journalist (see, the two may not be so far apart), have resulted in a campaign called Just Bahraini that seeks to adapt a previous incarnation of cyberjournalist’s Bloggers Code of Ethics to the Bahraini blogosphere to try to reduce sectarian hate speech among Bahraini bloggers. Their aim is to have it “adopted and signed by all Electronic Publishers, be they bloggers, webmasters, forum moderators, etc.” by August 31, which is apparently International Blog Day. You can bet we’ll also be doing something in Beirut.
On a similar note, Digiactive, though just about five months old, is fast becoming a must-read resource. They conveniently organize the site by region, learning opportunities, and tools you can use, including blogs. If you’re still wondering what good blogs are for. Get over there quickly.
One Comment
Thank you for the link. If I may correct you on one thing, the Just Bahraini anti-sectarian campaign predated this new one Ahmed Al-Aradi and myself just launched. The original campaign was launched by myself and has its own website at http://justbahraini.org
The current incarnation could very well be looked at as a natural progression from the Just Bahraini campaign in that we are trying to lay the foundation for a comprehensive anti-discrimination law in Bahrain.