1. Learning from the West 3 ways to improve citizen media in Belarus Evgeny Morozov/Transitions Online

2. 3 ways to improve: a personal perspective

Increasethe # of serious, analytical, investigative posts

Legitimizeblogging: from users with free time to users with smth to say

Makethe blogosphere more accessible/useful to journalists and other professionals

3. Life of a post written in English 4. Step I: Create a new post 5. Step II: Write the text 6. Step III: Tag it 7. Step IV: Post it to the blog! 8. But it also appears here 9. And here 10. and here 11. And if somebody diggs it, also here.. 12. And very likely also somewhere here 13. But what if your post is really good? 14. Within a few hours, it would make it here 15. and here 16. and here 17. and here 18. And of course here 19. Then it appear on pop. aggregators 20. And buzz aggregators 21. And human buzz aggregators 22. And news aggregators 23. Other bloggers will easily find it 24. and write about your post/blog 25. You might even appear on some community news programs 26. Perhaps, even MSM will mention it 27. Result: Slashdot/Digg effect 28. Observations?

In 24 hours: from virtually nowhere to MSM

Increase visibility/popularity of ones blog by thousands of times

Establish connections to top blogs

Hard work pays off quickly; visibility cycle is very short

Incentives to post go up tremendously, as better posts lead to better visibility

29. Life of a post written in Belarusian 30. Write a post on LJ 31. Repost it on minsk_by 32. and a few other communities 33. and hope that youll be featured in RFERL overview 34. Or Nasha Niva 35. But

You are still pretty much invisible to other bloggers

There is no way for them to express whether they like or dislike your post

They cant easily share it with others

Very few of them use RSS, i.e. most of them dont actively search for info on selected topics, but rather read whatever is on minsk_by

36. Implications?

Low incentives to post in general

Even lower incentives to write long, analytical posts

As a result, most bloggers write for the people in their friend list on LiveJournal not even hoping to get global audience

Many of them just write password-protect postswhich is almost unheard of in the West

37. Results ?

Blogging culture that thrives on short and often very personal posts at the cost of longer and more controversial pieces offering social commentary

Busy people and professionals might be discouraged from blogging, since no matter how good their arguments are, they are given equal treatment by the rest of the LiveJournal mob

38. Hypothesis As more content-meritocracy is introduced to the .by blogosphere, it will a) have better/deeper posts b) become more appealing to serious people 39. Other benefits The more blogging and content-sharing tools are localized, the easier it will be for journalists, bloggers, and other professionals to take full advantage of the blogosphere!!! 40. Search better 41. Track the buzz/Hunt for Emerging Stories 42. Track trends 43. Track key people 44. Track key phrases 45. Track Full Conversation 46. Track full conversations II 47. Track both MSM/blogosphere 48. Track LOCAL conversations 49. Track Feedback to your stories 50. Thank you! Questions?Email: morozove@tol.org 51. disclaimer: I've done my best to attribute slides, graphs and screenshots used in this presentation. Nobody is perfect, and some of them may have slipped in unclaimed apologies to the original right holders. Let's hope that my frivolous use of your graphs or tables falls under fair use ;-)