Political leaders at next month’s G20 summit are getting ready to be quizzed by bloggers. It looks like this is the first major political meeting where bloggers have had the same access as the media. It’s all part of a group called G20 Voices that’s been set up by charities like Save the Children, Oxfam and Comic Relief. Their main aim is to push forward concerns from the public about the economy onto the world’s most prominent politicians.
G20 Voices is inviting a group of influential bloggers to step up and have their say at the summit. They want public to go online and nominate bloggers. So far 600 bloggers have been nominated, but that will be whittled down to just 50 who will confront the world’s politicians in London next month.
G20 Voices want:
- 15 bloggers from the developing world
- 10 bloggers focused on poverty reduction
- 10 bloggers focused on climate change
- 1 bloggers from each of the G20 countries
- 10 high profile and eclectic bloggers
Just as the Israeli Consulate let Twitterer’s actively take place in a citizen press conference and make contributions to their blogs during the Gaza conflict, this seems to be another example of bloggers having a say in times of crisis (this one being the economic crisis). The big question is how much attention do the world leaders really pay to these attempts of free speech… or are they just doing it so that they are being seen to be listenening to their global public?
Related links:
Click here for an article on G20 Voices by Sky’s Twitter correspondent.
Click here for G20 Summit debate page.
Filed under: democracies, developing countries, newly industrialising countries, presentation chat
Nina,
Very contemporary. Like it. I was reading about this article in the evening.
Finally, some great moves to address seriously looming issues. The interesting task remains what happens next. Do you remember our political presentation on G8? On one of the slides we had addressed the credibility of these summits. In my opinion I’m still doubtful about the issues that are raised and will be discussed for e.g:poverty reduction and climate change. Infact after the Kyoto protocol convention, the world has embarked on a roller coaster of carbon emission . Second issue is poverty reduction – I’ve been hearing the eradication of poverty alone in India right from my school days, taking in account the progress country has made.
The new advancement here is they’re engaging masses to ask critical questions. Amid the current climate of crisis, I hope this summit has to offer some combatant.
I agree Kamini, as you said one only has to take a look at the 1998 Kyoto protocol convention on climate change- the G8’s promise to cut emissions has basically been a failure… the 2005 summit at Gleneagles wasn’t been any better. So yes, it will be interesting to see if the G20 can make any positive movements and stick to them. They’re already under pressure to come up with something substantial because of the current financial crisis and this added involvement from the public means they will be in the spotlight and feeling the even more pressure to come up with solutions.
There’s no telling how much impact the G2 Voice bloggers will have in influencing the G20, but I think it’s safe to say that this kind of public involvement via blogs will become ever more popular when addressing politicians.
Watch this space!
It is interesting that bloggers have got a ’say’, purely from a multimedia point of view, but honestly, does anyone believe that anything will be resolved from this? That important global issues will be raised and politicians grilled by the bloggers? What is the point? It just seems like a token gimmick to keep the public- or blogosphere- amused, giving some semblance of a democratic process taking place. I am extremely cynical.
‘If you want to go to G20… you can even nominate yourself.’
A very telling sentence there from the youtube G20 resident blogger above.
Politicians at G20 will simply not have the time to address the concerns of the bloggers. They barely have enough time to address the concerns of each other. The last G20, a token event held in Washington in the dying days of the Bush administration, made some pretty vague resolutions before everyone went home well-fed and forrero roche’d. This time doesn’t promise to be any better, even as the world slides into recession. Sure, Gordon Brown has realised the gravity of the situation and drawn up an extremely long to-do list- but who’s listening, and most importantly of all, who’s agreeing?
The American delegate is underfunded at best, ambivalent at worst, while emerging economies from the East put the blame for financial ruin squarely in the court of the US and UK.
With a day or so of negotiation in this frustrating atmosphere, will being a ‘resident blogger’ mean anything at all?
Hi Nina,
Such an interesting post, thanks for that. Josh is being a bit cynical I think – anything that gives people a voice is good. There is the danger that individual voices get lost in the chatter in the blogosphere, but the more the merrier is, I think, the sentiment we should be embracing.
I think you guys might be interested in what Sophie’s been looking into over on the Citizen Journo blog – the limiting of bloggers’ use of AP content by AP themselves. The content is usually paid for by subscription, but AP is now telling bloggers that they are not allowed to link to AP content or even quote from it. I think this is quite a severe limit on press freedom.
Amy Pollock
Hi guys, thanks for your comments. Yes Josh, you are being rather cynical but I can understand what you’re saying here and I do agree to an extent. What possible difference can a handful of bloggers make in influencing big political decisions when the world leaders can’t even decide on workable solutions themselves?
However saying that and echoing Amy, we really should be embracing this notion that gives everyday people the chance to have a collective voice at such an event. It might not have a massive impact but it’s a start and we may as well get used to it because, as the blogosphere grows in popularity I can see this kind of thing happening more and more.
Thanks Amy for signposting me on to Sophie’s blog post, I’ve just had a look and made a comment. It is so interesting and to be honest I’m really not sure what to make of AP actions, I think they’re being a little greedy. But whether they are right or wrong in charging bloggers for using their content, it is definitely going to have an impact of press freedom. Imagine if all news agencies started charging people to use their quotes! Not good.