Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

Reporters Without Borders have launched a truely useful little book for all of you out there worried about receiving a knock on your door in the middle of the night. For me it contains something very important; an ethics code to be adhered to.

This handbook can be downloaded here and contains chapters entitled:

Bloggers, the new heralds of free expression
What’s a blog ?
The language of blogging
Choosing the best tool
How to set up and run a blog
What ethics should bloggers have ?
Getting your blog picked up by search-engines
What really makes a blog shine ?
Personal accounts:
- Germany
- Bahrain
- USA
- Hong Kong
- Iran
- Nepal
How to blog anonymously
Technical ways to get round censorship
Ensuring your e-mail is truly private
Internet-censor world championship

Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.

Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.

Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

Human Rights