In order to continue our efforts to better integrate Rising Voices into the main Global Voices site, we created this quick guide to explain how our community can write posts that align with our mission.

Other important documents:

• How to Write for GV Best practices for writing and reporting a GV story.
• Style Guide Information about GV stylistic standards.
• Posting Guide Technical information about creating posts including text formatting styles and instructions for dealing with images and video.

What is a Rising Voices post?

An RV post always touches in some way on our mission of digital inclusion through the support of underrepresented or marginalized communities using the internet to tell their own digital story or participate more actively online. Our focus is exclusively on all types of participatory digital media, which may include blogs, microblogs, social media, digital audio/video, mapping, and other types of digital content creation.

We are also interested in the topics of access and the adoption/application of these tools to meet the needs of the local community.

We like to highlight projects that may be training their local community how to use citizen media, and especially if the project is led by the community itself. We define these communities as sectors of society that may be marginalized and whose voices are not very visible in online conversations; they may include linguistic groups, certain demographics along socio-economic or minority groups, etc.

We focus on innovative projects, tools, digital education, and leaders that are working to make the Internet more inclusive.

What makes a Rising Voices post different?

In comparison to other posts on Global Voices, RV's focus is less about news content, and more about the process. We focus on the way that these communities organize and mobilize so that these voices are better represented online.

No quotations from citizen media are required, and we encourage paraphrasing informative details taken from project websites instead of quoting them. We encourage authors to not simply research information already found in other articles, but to find a new angle.

More often than not, RV stories are not considered breaking news or particularly time-sensitive, so authors can take the time required to pursue additional information. We encourage authors to reach out to key people in the story through email or Skype interviews in order to clarify information. This also helps facilitate the direct connection between these initiatives and the GV community.

Please see here for Recent Rising Voices posts.

Types of Rising Voices posts

The internet as a tool for language promotion online

Many RV posts have featured projects that leverage the internet to promote or revitalize indigenous, endangered, or minority languages around the world. While we are interested in all topics related to the overall strategy of language revitalization, RV posts should have a digital or internet component related to this language promotion.

- An online learning platform for Colombian indigenous languages

Individual profiles and interviews

An interview with or profile of an organizer leading workshops so that their local community can use citizen media to tell own underreported stories. Or a digital activist promoting their language and culture through citizen media:

- An interview with a librarian using citizen media to promote a Guatemalan indigenous language.
– An interview with a young Inuit singer spreading her music on SoundCloud.

Projects providing resources: Internet access, mentoring, training

A profile of a group working on a project or a tool to help encourage more active participation online through digital tools:

- An article about IdeasBox, providing resources and Internet access to refugee camps.

Tools helping communities participate more actively online

A description of a new or interesting technological development or project working on a specific social concern of the daily life of a community underrepresented online.

- A profile on a collaborative project to map those disappeared during Mexico’s drug war.

Content featured from new citizen media outreach projects

A series of photographs or videos from a new project teaching citizens from the underrepresented to make digital media.

- An article about a blog in Mali sharing local traditions through photos
– An article about video postcards from Oaxacan children

Featuring content from Rising Voices grantees

We want to encourage GV members to not only read and comment on the new content created by our grantees, but to help amplify these voices. The featured content can be published as a standalone post or integrated into a broader post about a particular subject from that country:

- Selecting a blog post or series of tweets from a RV grantee and tie it into a broader issue, such as Nigerien orphans.

We can share RSS feeds and Twitter accounts of the grantees from your region/country. We can also provide leads when there is interesting content from these projects. Please make sure to consult with Eddie especially for these posts, as he will additional background information regarding the projects.

Short posts

You can also contribute RV-focused short posts (150-200 words) highlighting an interesting or innovative project. See here for related guidelines for these shorter and less time-consuming articles.

Editing process

1. Author pitches a story to their Regional Editor, who gives their feedback. Regional Editors may also suggest topics directly to authors or to regional lists.

2. Author submits the story to the regional editor, who edits the story. Please add Eddie to Edit Flow to keep him in the loop. However, Eddie will not be editing or participating in the editing conversation at this stage except in extraordinary circumstances. Most of his feedback will take place in Step #1 during the original pitch.

3. The regional editor submits the story to sub-editing.

4. The story is published by the regional editor on the Global Voices main site with a RV badge (click the Rising Voices category).

Please note: From time to time, Eddie also has published posts under the RV category. In many cases, he works directly with sub-editors before publishing the post. When the post is about a particular region, he will let the regional editor know about the post in case another author is working on something similar.