Public Discussion

After India's agriculture minister Sharad Pawar was slapped by a young Sikh man at a function in New Delhi, to record his protest against corruption in high places, social media sites went viral with musical spoofs and caricatured images of the incident.

Using 140 characters or less, Chief Francis Kariuki in Kenya, has tweeted his way to reducing crime in his and surrounding villages.

There is a tension resonating through Ghana's airwaves, an electric current fueled by rivaling interests between community radio advocates and Ghana's National Communications Authority.

Community radio stations in Brazil are finding the internet and user-friendly information technologies to be valuable allies for their broadcasts, which focus on citizenship, social equity and human rights.

Fifteen respected academics from different Turkish universities signed a declaration in Ankara last week protesting recent state regulations restricting access to a variety of websites on ‘moral' and ‘national integrity' grounds.

The number one rule young journalists are taught when starting radio broadcasting is simple: No dead air. Cough into the microphone if you must, but don't allow silence to creep in.

The release of 651 prisoners, a process which started this month, is being seen as a victory for activists and families who have had to contend with Burma's notorious prison system.

The so-called "Arab Spring" led U.S. network television evening news coverage during 2011, comprising a total of about 10 percent of all the news coverage provided by the three major commercial networks during 2011, according to the latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

So here I am, an Arab journalist in Silicon Valley, where four out of every four people I meet believe Facebook invented the Arab Spring. Three more weeks here and I may start to hallucinate that Mark Zuckerberg was a Cairo-slums native named Hassouna El-Fatatri, who rotted in a Mubarak prison for advocating personal privacy rights.

The number of journalists in prison worldwide has spiked to its highest level in 15 years. Of them, nearly half worked online, raising larger questions about Internet freedom for more than just reporters, but average citizens as well.

A new book on the influential New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman sets out to debunk his hawkish, neoliberal views, accusing him of overt racism, factual errors and skewed judgments on issues ranging from the U.S. invasion of Iraq to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As the International Day for Persons with Disabilities approaches this Saturday, one institution is working to remove some of the barriers that prevent disabled people from taking a leading role in policies that affect their lives.

A unique campaign in the Philippines is using stylised online photos to raise awareness on HIV/AIDS. Fashion and conceptual photographer Niccolo Cosme first initiated Project Headshot Clinic in 2007 as a way of merging profile photos online and advertising.

The Butts of Punjab have become the butt of jokes after Pakistan's telecom authorities moved to ban "obscene" content on short messaging service (SMS) texts over mobile phones.

The demise of radio has been predicted for many years, but the medium is adapting, transforming and proving to be a cost-effective tool in development, experts say.

In a remote Indian village in the Western state of Maharashtra, a fourth-grader named Suraj Balu Zore proudly told IPS that he can now effortlessly operate a laptop computer.

The first United Nations (U.N.) Security Council resolution to specifically address women's contributions to conflict prevention and sustainable peace was passed just 11 years ago, on Oct. 31, 2000.

Between 2007 and 2011, carbon emissions from coal use in the United States dropped 10 percent. During the same period, emissions from oil use dropped 11 percent.

The Syrian government has accepted several measures suggested by the Arab League aimed at halting the violence in the country, including the removal of tanks and armoured vehicles from the streets.

A Bangladeshi humanitarian with a British knighthood - and head of one of the world's largest non-governmental organisations (NGOs) promoting the cause of education - walked way with half a million dollars in prize money and a gold medal at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in the Qatari capital of Doha.