This course aims to introduce the user to the discipline of Citizen
Journalism. It draws on the work of the leading proponents of Citizen
Journalism to offer a basic introduction to the concept, describing its
potential for civil society as an advocacy tool.

The second course in our offering, we focus here on the political, legal and ethical aspects of journalism practice within each of the participating countries in this project. The content will attempt to describe the institutional and societal contexts within which participants will operate as citizen journalists. Participants will explore the democratic functions of the media as well as the legal and
moral constraints they, as citizen journalists, are likely to experience in their work.

Our Media Tools course is designed to assist the user to utilise the various ournalistic tools efficiently. The resources collated will focus on reporting, writing and editing skills with the objective being to foster an ability to write clearly and coherently using narrative, descriptive, and analytical methods. Resources will also include tips and instructional skills on the effective use of audio and video media.

This module aims to introduce the user to the basic building blocks of Web 2.0 – though some of these building blocks may be edging into Web 2.5 by this now. Many of these tools have been around for ages (some argue that blogging dates back to the Usenet days of the early 1990s), so really web 2.0 not about a specific technology but rather a combination of many of them and – most importantly - the use of these technologies by an ever wider group of people.

We will offer a 6-week long online course in reporting and writing. This can accommodate a maximum of 10 people as it will involve intensive support and feedback to each person. But the course can be repeated at intervals, so that we can run the same course a number of times during the year, depending on interest.

Digital stories are stories produced, stored and disseminated using digital media. It is a method of recording and documenting the voices and experiences of ordinary people’s true stories using digital media in a compelling and emotionally engaging way.

Many people in southern and East Africa are blogging to express their opinions on current issues in their countries, or to write about events and issues that are not being covered in the mainstream media. Sometimes these opinions and issues are uncontroversial.
But many times, bloggers are operating in countries where freedom of speech is limited in one way or another, or where there are various kinds of human rights violations. In these situations blogging can be dangerous.

Podcasts are audio files - generally in MP3 format - that can be uploaded to the web and downloaded to individual PCs or laptops and transferred to an iPod or other MP3 player for listening. Special software is needed for subscribing to podcasts -- iTunes is very widely used, but many other programmes are also freely available.