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 Increase the # of serious, analytical, investigative posts Legitimize blogging: from users with free time to users with smth to say Make the 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

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 one’s 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 you’ll 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 can’t easily share it with others Very few of them use RSS, i.e. most of them don’t 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 posts— which 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