It has been quite a struggle and probably the hardest thing so far in my life to write (I guess that means my life hasn’t had much hard writing so far?) 

Anyway, I will be defending at the end of this month, September 25th. To commemorate this great moment, I changed the title of this blog, which previously was unimaginatively and narcisticly titled after my own name, but which now carries the name “Global Voices, One World”. It’s a play on an influential 1980s UNESCO report that was called “Many Voices, One World” that looked at the structures of global communication back then, strongly condemning the dominance of the industrialized nation-states in the global production and distribution of media content, but also pissing off the United States and the United Kingdom in the process who ended up withdrawing from UNESCO for decades and who did not rejoin UNESCO until recently. And Global Voices is, of course, the name of the organization I am researching for my dissertation.

The Hyperlinked Society, the book that I co-edited with Dr. Joseph Turow is published and for sale. It came out of the similar named conference that we held two years ago. The book looks great, has a great collection of articles written by impressive scholars (self not included), and it’s my first book! Needless to say, I’m pretty proud and thankful for this wonderful opportunity Dr. Turow and the Annenberg School has given me. If you mail me, I might be able to get you a digital copy (although of course, I’d prefer you buy a paper copy)

Last month, I also presented a paper titled “The Great Firewall as Iron Curtain 2.0″ at the sixth Chinese Internet Research conference held at Hong Kong University. It got quite some attention and was blogged by the Wall Street Journal, by Rebecca MacKinnon, Chez Say, and the Internet & Democracy project at the Berkman Center.

I also attended the Global Voices summit in Budapest, which was simply, one word, awesome. Out of the conversations that followed this summit, I was suggested to start a research hub for scholars who are interested in researching Global Voices. Feel free to join!

Finally, right now, I am busy preparing my dissertation proposal. Wish me luck!

• finished the section on news values
• started the section on routines

The section on news values will describe what they are, why they are important for understanding the production (and selection) of news, and what some of the problems surrounding them are.

I will also need to start thinking about the section on routines. How does it fit in the larger context of my proposal, and what are the issues surrounding routines that I want to discuss and use for my project?

A week later, also in Budapest, will be the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit (the program looks great).

Anyone who has Budapest tips and recommended places for me, feel free to mail me or leave a comment, since it seems I will spend quite some time there this June!