About DCI
The annual Digital Citizen Indaba (DCI) is a platform for bloggers, podcasters, vodcasters, mobile journalists, citizen reporters, new media practitioners, online industry experts and civil society representatives, as citizens who try to empower themselves and their community using new media technologies. The DCI takes place at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa just before the annual Highway Africa Conference (HA) in September.
History of DCI
The DCI was established after it was recognised that Highway Africa could do more to encourage new media take-up by non-journalists, thereby ensuring that citizens have a (digital) voice too.
– 2006 & 2007 –
The first DCI was held in 2006 and since then has taken place shortly before the HA conference so that HA delegates can also participate in DCI if they so wish. The second DCI in 2007 attracted high-level speakers and participants and these included Africa’s foremost bloggers, Ory Okolloh and Daudi Were. While the first DCI focussed on blogging in Africa, subsequent DCI’s focussed on a broader array of digital technologies used to promote citizen involvement, such as Web 2.0, mobile media and microblogs.
This DCI also held debates on the conditions needed for activist digital media to flourish, and focussed on the myriad restrictive laws and policies constraining the development of a digital public sphere.
– 2008 –
The third DCI in 2008 had the theme ‘Technology for the digital citizen’, which complimented HA’s overall theme of ‘Citizen journalism, journalism for citizens’, while maintaining its focus on citizens rather than journalists. This DCI focussed on questions of appropriate technology: with all the new media technologies available to citizens it has become increasingly difficult to identify the technologies we should take note of and those we shouldn’t spend any time on. Therefore, the DCI concentrated on the technologies that have proven to empower Africa’s digital citizens.
– 2009 –
The working theme of the 2009 DCI is ‘digital civil society and journalism in Africa’, and aims to focus on the complex interaction between the mainstream media and civil society. It will also focus on how this interaction could be leveraged to advance civil society activism and enrich journalism on grassroots issues. Some very interesting and inventive experiments in digital media activism, and journalistic take-up of the information disseminated during the course of this activism, have taken place. The DCI would like to showcase these experiments as ‘best practice’, with the intention of ensuring that DCI participants can integrate these practices into their work. The DCI will also include case studies where online and mobile media have been used to disseminate crucial information during state crackdowns on the mainstream media. The importance of citizen-based media in addressing the gaps and silences in mainstream media reporting will also be explored.
Who visits DCI?
The Digital Citizen Indaba brings together bloggers, podcasters, vodcasters, mobile journalists, citizen reporters, new media practitioners, online industry experts and civil society representatives, as citizens who try to empower themselves using new media technologies. The purpose of bringing them together is to enable this empowerment to take place through participation in debate about the state of digital media, information sharing and skills transfer using experts in the field.
Who organises DCI?
In 2009 Prof Jane Duncan, the Information and Technology Chair of Highway Africa, and Elvira van Noort, Rhodes University Master of Arts in Journalism and Media Studies, coordinate the DCI. You can contact both Jane and Elvira via e-mail: dcindaba@gmail.com
