Deutsche Welle‘s annual competition for the best of the world's blogs has just announced this year's winners. Congratulations to all! A brief summary:
Best Blog – Jury Choice: Mosa'ab Elshamy's photo blog on current events in Cairo. His photographs are powerful depictions of both everyday life and the conflicts which have recently rocked the country. His abilities to cross cultural or linguistic borders and to represent the divisions and rifts in Egyptian society were noted by jury members.
Best Blog – People's Choice: Euromaydan – 300,000 subscriber-strong Facebook group, the largest in Ukraine, had helped to mobilize people and coordinate the uprising
Most Creative & Original – Jury Choice – weicombo is an artist who uses only one Chinese character per post, slightly altering it to create irony or satire, keeping readers guessing exactly what point he is trying to get across, getting around censorship
Most Creative & Original – People's Choice -Вавилон13 (Babylon 13), created by a group of documentary filmmakers, records the first steps of civil society in Ukraine
Global Media Forum Award – Jury Choice – Khabar Lahariya, a weekly newspaper in local language written by rural women across India for 12 years, working on issues which receive minimal media coverage.
Global Media Forum Award – People's Choice - Women Chapter, an alternative media platform for Bangladeshi women developing a support center for female journalists
Best Innovation – Jury and People's Choice: BanglaBraille project, which enables school textbooks to be printed in braille and created in audio versions for visually impaired students in Bangladesh, through a network of volunteers who digitize books and conduct fundraising
Best Social Activism – Jury Choice: Visualizing Palestine creates infographics showing the daily lives of Palestinians and refugees, working on not only Israeli relations but also social concerns and environmental issues
Best Social Activism – People's Choice: 新公民运动 (The New Citizen's Movement) encourages people to take civil-minded actions and hopes to transform China into a civil socieety
Reporters Without Borders Award – Jury and People's Choice: YanukovychLeaks, a presentation of the collective work of a group of Ukranian journalists working to report on former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his supporters based around salvaged records which had been thrown into a swimming pool.
People's Choice Awards by language:
English: the Cartoon Movement – a platform for political cartoons and a space to discuss them
Ukranian: Блог Сергія Лещенка - the blog of Serhiy Leshchenko, an investigative journalist working on exposing the luxury lifestyle of the previous government
Indonesian: Change.org Indonesian – Helping to start anti-corruption campaigns
Persian: منصفانه - A collection of life experiences
Chinese: 艾晓明工作室博客 (Ai Xiaoming) – the blog of a documentary filmmaker who is currently working on the trial of the New Citizen's Movement
Portuguese: Migra Mundo – Reporting on problems of migrants in Brazil
Turkish: Yüksekova Haber - a Kurdish news source from both citizen and professional journalists
Hindi: बतंगड़ – An analysis of contemporary issues in India
French: Les Chroniques de Yamma – written by a self-proclaimed “unconventional woman” from Morocco on contemporary culture
Russian: Стопфейк (StopFake) – a fact-checking website to verify reporting from Crimea
Spanish: Yo Soy Red - a collection of relevant and alternative news from around Mexico
Arabic: قل (Qoll) – An aggregation of opinions posted in Egypt
German: Melancholia Modeste – described as “The stories that end up writing your life.”
Bengali: Zero to Infinity - A Q&A style science blog
