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Annoniblogging was a roundtable at BlogNashville on eofforts to anonimize blogging for bloggers working in regimes with no freedom of speech guarantees.
It was led by Mark Glaser, Online Journalism Review, and participants included Hossein Derakhshan, Iranian and Middle Eastern blogger; Tom Biro; Media Bloggers’ founder Bob Cox, Bennett Haselton of Circumventor software for accessing blocked web sites; Alex Yuriev (CTO Zubr Communications); Rebecca MacKinnon of Harvard’s Berkman Center; Adam Shostack, (Project Coordinator, Spirit of America’s anonymous blogging project) and Matthew Sheffield on protecting blogger anonymity in a governmental settings and through legislation.
I still think that anonymous workplace blogging is a bad idea unless it’s a whistle blowing situation. Sorry folks, but that’s why they call it work. Better to encourage your employer to develop a blogging policy.
Avoiding the credibility tradeoff
Panelists noted that some credibility may be lost in anonymous blogs because it’s hard to trust information when you don’t know its real source. But in the case of bloggers in politically oppressed nations like Iran, Iraq, Nepal and China, anonymous blogging can literally be a matter of life and death, freedom or jail.
Methods of masking blogger identity were discussed; Radio Free Nepal, for example, is set up so someone outside Nepal posts after getting the information via email.
Mark Glaser is trying to start a site where bloggers could be anonymous after an organization verifies who they are and that there is some way to check the validity of information being given.
Related Links:
Rebecca MacKinnon
The Media Drop
Spirit of America
blognashville