Articles by Pontus Westerberg
Me? You could call me a serial expat, I guess. I'm Swedish but I grew up in East and Southern Africa, have lived in the UK for the last eight years and I'm married to a Basque girl. My undergraduate studies were in Economics and International Development and since I graduated in 2004 I've been doing digital communications work for non-profit organisations in the UK, Africa and South America. At the moment I am combining studying an MA in Global Media and Postnational Communications with working as a web editor for the UK's largest social investor. I'm particularly interested in how the web can be used for social good, the 'death' (or not) of journalism and ICT for development. I'm a firm believer that information needs to remain free (in several senses) on the interwebs. Parts of my heart are in London, Stockholm, Härnösand, San Sebastian, Accra and Nairobi. Oh, and I love Wordpress.
From Gareth Bentley, who runs the Transnational News course.
‘Academics often think decisions are made for ideological reasons when, in fact, it’s happenstance, technology not working or lack of money. News is a pretty random business in many …
In solidarity with the SOAS Occupation and the student protests agains the proposed increase in tuition fees, we had some fun with the Liberal Democrat and Conservative Facebook pages last night.
There’s been a lot of talk in the media about how the current student protests are organised using ‘social media’. But how is it being done? Here’s my quick guide to organising a successful protest …
The financial crisis exposed the power of unregulated financial markets to wreck the real economy most of us depend on. And the bailouts and bonuses have shown that when bankers get it wrong, …
I thought I’d share a campaign I’m working on at the moment at the World Development Movement: ‘stop bankers betting on food and causing hunger’ and what we’ve been doing to promote it online.
The aim …
The web has always been social to me. One of the first things I did when I first started using it around 1996 was set up an email account with a small email service which …
This map of Africa, with lots of other countries superimposed on it, has made the rounds on Twitter over the last week or so. Really does make you think.
So, after a long summer in which Project Carousel has been laying dormant, a new academic year has started. A new year with a new crop of students, untainted by essay deadlines, Deleuze and late nights in the junior common room and with new ideas ready to be debated.
I’m gutted that Sweden hasn’t qualified for this year’s World Cup. Last time it happened – the only time in the last 20 years – I was just 17 years old. So who should I …
Following on from my previous post about the digital divide not being the internet’s fault, I thought I’d write about some more practical stuff. As the benevolent dictator said: ‘Ttheory is good only as far as it connects to something’. So in this post I’ll be looking at digital activism in Zimbabwe – sokwanele.com and kubatana.net.
Recently I’ve been having quite a few conversations about social media where people are expressing quite a high level of scepticism. A common view is that we should be careful when promoting social media because not everyone has access to the necessary technology to use it.
A map showing the topics being discussed in Iranian blogs. No conservative poetry is being written.
With all the stuff going on in Haiti, I thought it’d be interesting to look at some of the digital mapping being carried out by Ushahidi.
The idea of flat earth news owes a lot to Herman and Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model’. The basic premise is that due to increased corporate ownership and focus on profits (with associated redundancies, cost-cutting and targets) journalists are no longer able to check stories like they used to. Here are its 10 rules.
Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson — or his successor in the next government) the power to make “secondary legislation” (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).
At the recent screening of 10 Tactics for turning information into action at SOAS, Marek Tuszynski, Co-founder and Director of Programs and Technology at the Tactical Technology Collective, talked about ‘info activism’.
I got some video …
Last night the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers reached an agreement over the much talked about (or not so much talked about, depending on which country you live in), Europan ‘Telecoms Reform Package’. …
On Thursday 5 November at 7pm the film 10 Tactics for Turning Information Into Action will be shown in the SOAS Junior Common Room. After the film rights activists fromt he Tactical Technology Collective will …
I like to keep an eye on what Jeff Jarvis is saying over at Buzzmachine. He basically spends all his time thinking and writing about how the news business model needs to be radically rethought …
Earlier this year a Swedish court found the four guys behind The Pirate Bay – Fredrik Sunde, Gottfrid Swarholm-Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström – guilty of breaking copyright law. The four were sentenced to …
