Best/Worst Sites 5: Friday

Best: WhirledView
Found this blog by three women through a link on a thread at MyDD::Progressive blogosphere diversity. The three bloggers are an international affairs specialist, a chemist specializing in international environmental projects, and a communications specialist with great experience in the U.S. foreign service. All in all, I'd say that's a pretty remarkable group of women. Most of their posts focus on international relations and politics, but also explore issues of international security and diplomacy. Blogrolls are extensive to other national security, international affairs and political blogs as well as to books on subjects they discuss. This blog makes a nice addition to the list of more country specific blogs I'm developing. I like this blog for the broad look at international relations.

Not so great: luck with searching
I've resisted calling websites worst. I keep finding things that aren't related specifically to my topic. It's not that they're bad, it's just the results of many of my searches haven't turned up as many great results as I'd like. I've found lots of feminist blogs (slightly related, but not completely); blogs by women about American politics; blogs by women living in other countries; blogs about international politics and relations, but not necessarily about women. I've refined searches in Technorati, ask.com, del.ic.ious, clusty.com, dogpile.com, google.com. I've found lots of good things to add to the blogroll along with excluding sites simply because my searching hasn't been up to par. I want something to jump out as just horrible. Maybe I'm being too nice. There's plenty that's awful.
Or, maybe it's that I've found so many great blogrolls, but they don't give me a sense of what's on the roll. Give me details about where you're sending me!

So, for example of blogs I've found that are pretty good, just not related to my topic:

• Guerrilla Women in Tennessee
• Development Activism
• Feminist Review
• In Women We Trust

Instant polling of readers

A post last month on the New York Times' The Caucus blog, Katharine Seelye asked readers for their thoughts on women and politics and the web. To date, there are 79 responses from men and women and suggest many different ideas. I love that the dialogue continues even after the deadline. The discussions just keep on going.

And, the results and Seelye's story here.

Elections back in 1924...

I found Susan Crawford's blog at some point in the past two weeks as I've been looking for resources. She's a professor of cyberlaw and communications law who blogs about those areas as well as the impact of technology on different aspects of society.

This post came through the RSS feeder this evening on how technology had a major impact on elections in 1924:

"... The new technology was remarkable. It had found a way to dispense with political middlemen. In a fashion it had restored the demos upon which republican government is founded. No candidate would be able to stand up to it who was unprepared to enlighten the electorate. It potentially gave to every member of the electorate the possibility of a direct reaction to the candidates themselvs. It reproduced to some degree, for the first time in the United States, the conditions of the Athenian democracy where every voter, for himself, could hear and judge the candidates.

The year was 1924: “…America finds herself this year in the act of virtually choosing her chief executive by an instrument that was up to a brief two years ago generally considered a freakish fad.”

“Politics,” the newspapers said, was “radio’s next big job.”

Worth a mention here because of how it relates to my other world of newspapers and dealing with change and the impact of new technology.

Best/Worst Sites 4: Thursday

Best: Antigone Magazine.
Jackpot. I should have come to Technorati and done this search a long time ago: global women politics blogosphere (but noooo... I had to try other search techniques first).
I found this blog for Antigone Magazine, a biannual print publication about women and politics at the University of British Columbia. The blog keeps the dialogue going throughout the year. It's written by several women and primarily focuses on politics in Canada, but also includes a fair amount of commentary on their neighbors to the south.

Not so great: Iranian Bloggers in Jail/Democracy for Iran
There is some good content here written by women. My complaints here tend to skew to the design of the site. While a beautiful language to look at, Arabic characters do not hold up well when reversed out of this black background. Also, image placement and column widths of the site have been skewed in such a way that type runs together and runaround on photos is awkward to the point of having one word per line in the sidebar. The blogroll here looks promising with many links to blogs and sites about democracy movements in Iran. The design is simply something keeping me from learning from this site.

Worst Sites 1b: Wednesday

somehow I skipped tuesday. or at least I think I did. no matter. I'll have 5 great and 5 not so great sites to share in a wrap up post by the end of the week. But for today's finds:

Worst: African Womens Blogs.
I really wanted this one to be a gem. Alas, not so much in the way of great blogs relating to women and the political blogosphere. This site purports to be an "aggregator of african women blogs," and asks readers to join the forum. What I found was several blogs written by women, but not necessarily women living in Africa. There were several African women who were blogging, just not about politics. The site also generated several errors when I clicked on links to see "Top Users" and "Listed Blogs." Thumbs down for a site that doesn't help this user easily find content on the site and for generating errors on links that should work.

Best/Worst Sites 2: Monday

Best: Women's eNews.
This site, funded by several leading U.S. think tanks and endowments including the Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, has a strong list of links to national and international women's issues. There are also a significant number of original articles and research on the site. Thus far, it's been one of the best spring boards to finding both domestic and international sites related to women and politics. I'm adding Women's eNews to the list of the best sites relating to my topic on the strong credibility of its sponsors, funding and endowment as well as its links to other quality websites.

Worst: Jagriti International
Adding this site to the list of worst is a little bittersweet as I'm adding it here mostly because the group has not been active since 2005 when

"On-going civil and political strife in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nepal have made it impossible for us to safely send Bridging Worlds volunteers to these countries. The U.S. Patriot Act and visa restrictions have also forced us to suspend our Bridging Worlds Emerging Leaders program because it is nearly impossible for women from grassroots organizations to meet stringent U.S. visa requirements. Therefore the board has sadly decided to indefinitely suspend our active programs."

The group has some good links to women's groups that are active in many developing nations. But, given Jagriti's lack of it's own recently updated information relating to women's groups and political advocacy, I'm reluctant to assume any of the links and contact information for the linked groups are active and accurate.
It's terribly unfortunate that violence and the Patriot Act are among the chief reasons this group had to discontinue assisting women in developing nations.

Best Sites 1a: 100 Women Political Bloggers

Lisa Bistreich posted about my blog, and a commenter there pointed me to this blog and a post of 100 links to women political bloggers. Talk about a gold mine! Thanks to Lisa and her commenter for the tip. I'll have to spend some serious time scouring this list. I think the bulk of the ones listed here may be domestic. But, I'm hopeful these 100 ladies will direct me to even more useful sites.

Updated 10.10.07: I'm updating this post to include this site as one of my 5 best for the assignment requirements. It makes the cut because of the volume of links related to the topic. While the list contains numerous U.S. bloggers, it's a tremendous link list to use to find others. It's relevant, timely and accurate. Better still, readers have been submitting their own links giving the site points for dynamics and reader interactivity.

Women in the Political Blogosphere

I’ll be spending the semester following women who blog about politics, specifically learning how women are blogging about the upcoming elections and female candidates. In short: women covering politics in the blogosphere. I’m also curious to know how women around the world participate in political coverage online. In this coming election year, the opinions of women bloggers could help define political landscape like never before. I see the research developing over two main themes that I brought up in my preamble:

• Women and the international blogging community. How do women stack up online in international communities? Are women taking the lead in the blogosphere?
  
• Elections and bloggers. What impact have women bloggers had on international elections? How have their opinions changed and defined campaigns around the world? Do international candidates turn to blogs and the web the way U.S. candidates are doing?

I’m hoping to learn more about the impact these women publishers are having domestically and abroad. The topic is one that could have significant interest to political followers as well as women with a keen interest in their role in the political world. I’ve grown up in a family who’s never shied away from a political discussion around the dinner table. I’ve helped develop election coverage at my newspaper. I’m not seeing a large number of women candidates in this election year (besides one very notable former first lady). I’m hoping I won’t find women’s voices absent in the online arena.

USEFUL KEYWORDS: women, bloggers, politics, gender, international media, blogosphere, influence
Also, I’ve found it worthwhile to search Google for specific domains, like .uk. I need to expand to include other specific country domains, .in (India) and .au (Australia). For the time being, I’ll stick with English language blogs, at least until I get a better sense of where I’m going. So far, several of the articles and blogs I’ve found have referred me to other non-English speaking blogs.

SOME INITIAL USEFUL SITES:
1. Blogs by Women
A moderated directory of more than 5,000 blogs published by women, on subjects ranging from politics to business to gardening to gender and sexuality. A good starting point for locating some off the beaten path blogs by women.

2. Blog Sisters
Founded by Jeneane Sessum, this one’s worthwhile for its extensive blogroll. I’m not sure all of those listed links will prove fruitful for my research, but it’s a strong starting spot to see what women are writing about. Sessum’s name has come up in several searches and in a couple articles I’ve started reading. She’s done a great deal of work in public relations and as a communications consultant.

3. Salon’s Broadsheet: Women’s Articles, Women’s Stories, Women’s Blog
Lots of links and stories to read on this online publication. There’s a fair amount of sass and humor, but also serious stories about political issues as well. From the about the site section: “Our aim is to cast a spotlight on news that puts women in the center … whether that means tracking news about how our rights are holding up, how well we're representing ourselves politically, or how the advertising world has decided to address us. …”

4. Google.com/scholar
Google’s academic journal search function. I’ve already found volumes of papers, theses and journal articles written about women bloggers and their impact on the blogosphere. Including papers from the journals like Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies and Journal of Gender studies as well as publications like the Guardian. I’ll also need to spend some time with UNC Libraries to see what Lexis/Nexis holds.

5. Arab Media & Society
Stepping a bit into classmate Justin Martin’s interest in The Arab Free Press, this particular article on Egyptian women bloggers gives some basic overview as well as links to some specific Egyptian women. The site also looks to be useful for its links to recent Nieman Reports on similar subjects as well as links to article by country or to topics like “Women in Media” or “Media and Politics.”

Welcome Aboard!

This is the last blog to complete my classwork for UNC's Graduate Certificate in Communication of Technology. What do I do next? Well, there's a couple different ideas floating around. But before I go jumping into '08, there's the matter of global perspectives to address.

My "blogging preamble," an essay proposal for this blog, was written the week before I went on vacation. So, it needs a bit more polish and revision before the topic makes an official debut. Couple things that I'm batting around to study this semester:

1. Global Access. Bandwidth and speed and access of different socio-economic groups. Also, global access in terms of what information is available in different countries and how that access is monitored.
2. The future of Newspapering. A theme I researched last semester for JOMC 710, lesliejwilkinson.googlepages.com, and continue to research at oinnovate.blogspot.com with newsroom colleagues. Perhaps the global focus looks at developing international newspaper resources, expanding on last semester’s domestic approach.
3. Women and the international blogging community. How do women stack up online in international communities? Are women taking the lead?
4. Elections and bloggers. What impact have bloggers had on international elections? How have their opinions changed and defined campaigns around the world? Do international candidates turn to blogs and the web the way U.S. candidates are doing?

Revisions in the works and a new preamble and research subject coming soon. I'm leaning towards doing something with a non-newspaper topic; I spend so much time at work thinking about papers as it is. I'm thinking a slight change of pace will be refreshing.

In the meantime, links to my J-713 classmates and my other certificate projects coming up soon. Here's to another great semester of online learning!