Ivan Sigal

Bio

Ivan Sigal is the Executive Director of Global Voices (http://globalvoicesonline.org), a non-profit online global citizens’ media initiative. Previously, as a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Ivan Sigal focused on how increased media and information access and participation using new technologies affect conflict-prone areas. He spent over ten years working in media development in the former Soviet Union and Asia, supporting and training journalists and working on media co-productions, and also working as a photographer. During that time Sigal worked for Internews Network, as Regional Director for Asia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan. He has a masters’ degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and an undergraduate degree from Williams College.

Abstract

Volunteerism and Global Voices

I will discuss the experience of Global Voices, an online community of volunteer authors who collectively write globalvoicesonline.org. The community includes several hundred authors, translators, freedom of speech activists, and individuals interested in supporting the development of online media skills and practice in the developing world.

Global Voices was founded at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and today is a nonprofit foundation based in the Netherlands. The organization has a small paid staff, most of whom work part-time (disclosure - that includes myself). The work that we produce for the site is published under a Creative Commons license, and the community and the site is invested in the idea of sharing information through links and neworks.

The typical Global Voices story is a kind of bricolage, built of links, excerpts, translations of excerpts, paraphrase, analysis, and links to or embeds of images, audio, video, graphics, and maps. the role of the writer is to highlight important issues and conversations occurring in developing world citizen media.

I will discuss the formation and growth of this community, and make explicit the questions surrounding resources that we encounter. The initiative as it is currently structured requires funding; as a nonprofit anything we raise goes to support the mission of the organization. How do we merge volunteer participation with some paid staffers, and the collection of revenue for certain kinds of activities? I will discuss work and leisure as it relates to the Global Voices experience, and relate it to other examples of both. I will also suggest some alternative perspectives to the case, focusing on civic engagement and citizenship, activism, and philanthropy.