Having now completed the marking for this academic year I can return to some work that i’ve been doing on notions of citizenship and the ways in which the internet is being used as a platform for political advocacy. I’m particularly interested in the ways that the net is being used by activists to circulate their messages, what impact (if any) blogging is having on democratic processes, and how new(er) media is unsettling old(er) media in political debate. I’m concentrating these interests on a particular ‘case’, that of Cuba and its emerging blogosphere. However, as I delve into the area I’m coming across some very interesting, more general, ideas that I’ll share with you over the next couple of months as I keep my promise to post (at least) twice a week to this blog.

The first is a video by Sami Ben Gharbia which I came across on Global Voices Online. It’s an activist’s answer to the Tunisian government’s ban on Youtube and Dailymotion, in order to prevent their netizens from watching video content featuring testimonies from former political prisoners and human rights activists. Google Earth is much more than a peice of entertainment.