"The ability of individuals to openly speak their minds is a core principle not only of American journalism, but American democracy. Even when speech is insulting or disrespectful to others-speech that might run afoul of hate speech laws throughout Western Europe or be banned outright in much of the ... rest of the world-it is generally permitted in the United States. But the rise of the Internet and the instantaneous global communications it enables have raised a host of new questions about how to handle hate speech and other potentially offensive speech when it can be seen by audiences in other countries that do not share those values." (CIMA website) more

"Citizen journalists across the globe are using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other new tools to spread articles, blog posts, videos, and photos of news happening in their countries. The new video journalists use these broader tools as well, taking full advantage of social media to share th ... eir videos and tell their stories to a wider audience. This report traces the dramatic rise in the use of crowd-sourced video and examines how this is affecting the international news media landscape. It offers recommendations for the media development community for harnessing the power–while mitigating the dangers–of citizen-shot video." (CIMA website) more