1. PSA Conference Announcement Posted by: "Satish Jung Shahi" [email protected] Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:13 am (PST)
Announcement for submitting papers for South Asian Conference on 'New Media Technologies and Freedom of Expression' 3 - 4 May 2009, Kathmandu, Nepal The 'freedom of expression' as safeguarded by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 16 has consistently been subject to intimidation by various social, political and economic actions in the sub-continent of South Asian democracies in the past few years. Lately in South Asian countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan the press has been attacked, journalists assassinated, threatened and intimidated in their endeavour to uphold the principles and ethos of freedom of press and freedom of expression. Though how dismal the situation maybe with press freedom and freedom of expression in South Asian countries, the new media technologies such as the Internet, hand-held devices (cell phones, PDAs) and wireless devices, and their applications like citizen journalism, blogs, Youtube and so on have provided promising opportunities to uphold freedom of press and freedom of expression in the sub-continent and elsewhere. In this context of opportunities provided by new media technologies, to commemorate the World Press Freedom Day (3 May 2009), Panos South Asia (PSA) is organising a two day sub-regional conference 'South Asian Conference on New Media Technologies and Freedom of Expression' in Kathmandu, Nepal from 3 - 4 May 2009. The conference aims to provide a forum for practitioners of new media technologies and freedom of expression for knowledge sharing and fostering a regional solidarity. Interested individual and institutional practitioners, researchers, academicians and related others from South Asian countries and elsewhere, in this regard are requested to submit an abstract (not more than 500 words) on three categories of: 1) New Media Technologies and Mainstream Media; 2) New Media Technologies and Citizen Journalism; and 3) New Media Technologies and Freedom of Expression/Informat ion. In the first category the papers should address the issues of how new media technologies have been applied in the context of upholding press freedom in mainstream media practices. In the second category, submitted papers should address the issues of new media and citizen journalism and how it upholds freedom of expression/informat ion. And the last but not the least category, the papers should discourse the overall issues of new media technologies and freedom of expression/informat ion. Papers submitted shall be selected on the basis of the accuracy to address and discourse the themes categorised in the preceding paragraph. For each category 4-5 papers shall be selected, which will be presented during the conference and published later by Panos South Asia. Interested individual and institutional practitioners, researchers, academicians and related others may submit their abstracts with a brief bio-data by e-mail to p...@panossouthasia .org by 20 March 2009. Only selected paper authors will be notified by PSA by 31 March 2009. The complete papers of the selected abstracts need to be submitted by 20 April 2009. The costs (travel, food, hotel etc) for attending the conference by the authors of the selected papers shall be covered by Panos South Asia.
