The internet has often been used as an outlet for people to express their views and opinions on any subject in the form of blogs. But we are now at the stage where our views and opinions are getting noticed by higher authorities. Due to the sometimes taboo nature of some people’s blogs they are threatened or imprisoned. This is where ‘Threatened voices’ steps in. This website helps these suppressed bloggers to be noticed by the world and express how freedom of speech online is being oppressed. In an effort to establish awareness quickly ‘Threatened voices’ is part of the quickly growing phenomena of Crowdsourcing.
For those that don’t know Crowdsourcing is when an organisation needs a task to be fulfilled but instead of doing that task themselves they broadcast the task to an unknown audience who complete the task for them.
So how does ‘Threatened voices’ use Crowdsourcing? Well its simple, there is a section which lets anyone ‘submit a report’ of someone who has been threatened or imprisoned. This section requires proof to backup any accusation so it can get validated and posted on the website quickly. Through Crowdsourcing there have been 195 cases of threatened or arrested bloggers. China, Egypt and Iran have the highest number of cases on ‘Threatened voices’ with a total of 85. Just to show the severity of this situation 35% of the reported cases on ‘Threatened voices’ have ended in bloggers being jailed. Blogs from people who have been prosecuted are available on this website; this gives the audience a chance to make their own opinion on the bloggers in question.
A website like this really struggles to generate interest because to governments and organisations of authority it gives them a negative image providing proof that there is control over freedom of speech. So ‘Threatened Voices’ adopts as many ways as possible to raise awareness by using Twitter, Facebook and also having Rss feeds available. This does broaden their reach but it gives the impression of narrowing its target audience.
I had not come across Threatened Voices until reading your blog post. I understood the concept of crowd sourcing, and was wondering myself about the limitations of what one could say over the web. However, being new to PR and the nature of the blog I was unaware that you could be imprisoned for what could be considered as taboo, over freedom of speech. It wasn’t until I looked at their website that I realised just how serious of an issue this can become to people not only in the UK but on a globally international stage. This information was shown on an interactive timeline used to visualize the extent of the threats made on Threatned Voices, as I‘m sure you are aware. Over 45% of journalists and bloggers worldwide are in prison due to their submission to the internet http://www.digiactive.org/2009/11/30/is-your-voice-threatened/ , it is said that this group of media workers represent the largest professional category in prison. I found your post on this issue interesting and it highlighted a lot of key area’s that I had not know before.
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