The Film Censor Board on June 3 barred the screening of Delhi Belly, an Indian movie produced by popular artiste Aamir Khan and issued an adult certification, after the distributor of the movie didn’t adhere by its direction to cut out five dialogues. The news produced uproar in Twitter generating an interesting debate on film censorship. Continue reading…
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NepalUnites for uniting Nepalis
Social entrepreneur Anil Chitrakar was one of the presentater during the Mashable’s Social Media Day Meetup in Kathmandu on June 30. At the event organized by Xplore International in partnership with Microsoft Innovation Center – Nepal, Chitrakar spoke about NepalUnites. NepalUnites is a social media campaign popularly/satirically called the Facebook Movement and Chitrakar is one among a few initiators.
In his presentation, he outlined the need and aim of NepalUnites, the challenges of using social media for social change, along with ideas and events of the group. I took down a few notes of his presentation and here they are:
BY ANIL CHITRAKAR
Yesterday, we asked people to come to the Football World Cup qualifying match between Nepal and East Timor. Why football? Because football, or sports, unites Nepalis. Likewise, we are also supporting music, releasing theme songs, because music also unites Nepalis.
The fundamental aim of NepalUnites is uniting Nepalis. Continue reading…
Saga of Social Media
While social media experts and enthusiasts around the world are celebrating the immense possibilities that the computer technologies have offered, it is worthwhile to look into trends and criticisms of the social media itself
The newest revolution in the way news and information are spread has been brought about by computer technologies. Internet technologies provide audience (previously mostly passive recipients of information that media delivered to them) a set of tools that they can use to select, consume and share report events, produce and distribute opinions; and influence priority and production of news that traditional media deliver them in an unprecedented way.
The same set of tools also enables individuals to widen the spectrum of social lives – by creating or joining in communities which may also choose to act on various scales. The tools also provide business institutions and organizations newest methods to expand their activities – whether in the domain of public relation and research or marketing, sales and advertising. Continue reading…
Social media: Just a communication tool
As the extended term of the Constituent Assembly (CA) approached nearer making it evident that the constitution of new Nepal would not be promulgated within the stipulated time, youths started raising their voices through social media. The Facebook Generation used the social networking site effectively to express their concerns and opinions; create communities; plan and gather a few hundred people in creative and traditional protest programs in the capital.
The media both mainstream and social – viewed the protests as precursors of the Facebook Revolution, a term that has become a cliché after the regime-changing people´s movement in Egypt. The protest in Egypt was fuelled by digital technologies – social networking sites such as Facebook and the micro blogging site such as Twitter. While labelling Nepal´s protest programs attended by a few hundred as the Facebook Revolution was an exaggeration, it was nevertheless not as useless as some of the critics have pointed out.
The biggest flaw in the logic that criticized those movements as fun-play by tech-savvy, clean jeans-wearing youths ´who were more concerned about going abroad´ was labelling social media as an initiator, rather than just a communication tool, of those protests. Continue reading…
Social Communicators on CA Term Extension
Social communicators, or the social media users especially Tweeple, followed the CA term extension night, May 28, with great enthusiasm contributing to frequently updated information and opinions. Following tweets on the night provided both information on what’s going on and opinions on what people were thinking about the events – sometimes the frustrations and many times humorous side.
This is an attempt to use storify.com to create a story about May 28 ripples on Twitter: Continue reading…
Code of ethics for bloggers
UPDATED ON MAY 27 WITH PROPOSED CODE OF ETHICS
With growing popularity of blogs in Nepal, many issues concerning blogs are emerging. One of the issues that needed to be immediately addressed is on ethical aspects of the blogs.
Blogs, by nature, is free. But as Rebecca Blood put it: The blog’s greatest strength – its uncensored, unmediated, uncontrolled voice – is also its greatest weakness.
While believing that blogs should remain free – uncensored and uncontrolled, it’s also worthwhile for bloggers to be responsible. As CyberJournalists.net states: Responsible bloggers should recognize that they are publishing words publicly, and therefore have certain ethical obligations to their readers, the people they write about, and society in general.
Code of Ethics is not strict principles that every bloggers should adhere to; rather it’s a standard guideline that bloggers can voluntarily follow. Code of conducts are formulated and followed by bloggers themselves. Following ethical publishing practices not only make the blogs standard but also convey a message to the readers that they can be trusted. Continue reading…
Constructive youth engagement through social media
At the time when the term Facebook generation is increasingly being used to refer to youths uninterested in political and social responsibilities, youths have came together to use the social media for constructive political and social engagements.
Many consider that Nepali youth in today’s urban societies normally detach themselves from politics, social responsibilities and look for opportunities to go abroad. While not completely false the ongoing political instability, decade long Maoist conflict, lack of opportunities and development have contributed to the rise of pessimistic thoughts among the youths. Equally true is the fact that the youths, at least some of them, have refocused themselves towards constructive engagements with an aim of contributing to the social and political causes.
Through social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, they have found a tool to give life to their initiatives; which can be accredited to the events around the world, the rising popularity of social media and most importantly, the trendiness of the social media that matches the youth’s curiosity.
Use of Facebook and Twitter is still considered by many as a detachment from what is happening around. Looking at someone, who is constantly checking on Facebook and Twitter updates on their laptop and/or mobile phones, the detachment, seems obvious. But when the social media feed them the information on what is going on around them along with opinions to their peer groups, it is safe to say that social media is just a new way of communication of the society. Continue reading…
Is blog under Press Council jurisdiction?
Recently, Press Council of Nepal (PCN) issued a letter seeking clarification from MySansar, Nepal’s most popular blog. This is first time that PCN has recognized the presence of a blog. This incident should also encourage the government – and its agencies – to have a policy about online media.
THE STORY
MySansar.com published a series of blog entries – including one by Om Thapa that was reproduced with permission from a weekly, Janaastha, on Binod Chaudhary. Chaudhary is a noted industrialist leading the Chaudhary Group (CG). The blogs were about alleged tax invading by CG in the light of the action initiated by the Ministry of Finance on tax invasion and fraud by 27 companies. The ministry has not yet named the companies, but the blog claimed CG is one of them.
The blog entries also claimed that CG also ‘forced’ Finance Minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari of actions leading to resignation of finance secretary Rameshwor Khanal. One of the post also criticized mainstream media for publication Chaudhary’s article claiming that the big percentage of the tax that the industrialist claimed to have paid is in fact the taxes collected by people during sales of their products. Continue reading…
Nepali journalism around Anuja scandal
Nepali journalism should learn lessons from Anuja scandal and move forward, rather than ridiculing a group of newspapers (or counter-attacking those who choose to ridicule) because this is the state of Nepali journalism – not only of a reporter or a newspaper
The Story
Nepal’s top national daily Kantipur and it’s sister publication The Kathmandu Post published a news report on its frontpage anchor position about Anuja Baniya who returned 9.1 million rupees and a diamond necklace to the owner after finding them abandoned in a public bus. President Dr Ram Baran Yadav himself called her to thank her – a news that was carried by almost all newspapers with backgrounder as published by Kantipur.
Soon after, there were news that stated police is investigating. The news turned out to be fake one and Kantipur did a praiseworthy job by publishing apology on frontpage stating that the story was untrue as the characters misled then. Continue reading…
The joys of books
While reading books is a diminishing habit – largely because of development of computer technologies, the best thing you can gift anyone are still books
Little more than a decade ago, my father requested my school principal to come to inspect my study room and to scold me for reading too many novels. I had accumulated around two dozens of books in my shelf then. Most of them were non-fictions but as anything other than course-books was considered ‘upanyas’ (novel) in those days, reading them was thought of as a habit that students had to avoid.
One of the most treasured moments of my childhood was when my principal visited demanding to see all my books and after inspecting them for half-an-hour or so, picked out a novel by Yudhir Thapa and said: “Except this one, reading other books is good.” Thapa was considered to be a pulp fiction writer of the time.
The statement left such a strong impact on my young mind that within next few years, I was notorious for gifting people books on their birthdays. I knew many of them would have preferred something else, but I was determined to show to them the imagination, wisdom and experience that a few hundred pages of bound printed papers have with in its pages by getting people into reading books. Continue reading…
