Background

1. Inspiration from inter-asia cultural studies

When I was working for inter-asia cultural studies, there were some discussions about the post-colonial conditions in the area of knowledge production, that our knowledge is very much framed by the East and West dichotomny; we know much more about the U.S. then our neigbouring countries, even though we have shared the same cold war and colonial history.

Inter-asia cultural studies is an attempt to construct an alternative frame of reference by building up a dialogical interllectual community across Asia. And I am very glad that i have the opportunties to work with the project for more than one year from 2000-2002. However, because the journal is published by Routledge and the community is very much limited to the Asia academic circle, the project is limited to extend itself to a wider circle although it tries very hard to link up with movement groups in Asia. With the development of internet and blogging culture, there are more potentials to popularize the idea of inter-locals dialogue.

2. Politics of representation

In the mainstream media, most of the "international" news are from western news sources such as Reuters, Associated Press, etc. when they report on non-western news, the perspectives are western oriented. For example, the report on Tai Shi Village election by Guardian is not only exaggerating, but also misleading by comparing the incident with Cultural revolution. However, it is only through this "english" report that the whole world begin to know what is going on in Taishi, China.

Another example is related to the anti-japanese demonstration in Mainland in May this year. The communication among people between two countries were mediated by the mainstream media which are very nationalistic. However, in the blogsphere, a blogger Andrea Leung, translated the discussion among Chinese blogger in his blog, and another Japanese blogger Joi Ito wrote an article explaining his position and called for more dialogues among people from two countries. Then I translated the article into Chinese and it was posted in several other mainland bloggers' blog for discussion.

In the chinese blogger conference in shanghai last month, there were some discussion about blogging beyond border, many people are interested to represent themselves in the international world rather than leaving it to the western mainstream media. However, such desire is still very much within the East and West framework. How about the unknows OTHERs?

The issue of translation or border crossing is beyond language. It is related with context and desire: how to channel our desire to cross the border of our national boundaries and also the East and West dichotomy; and how to build communities among locals driven by local concern? Such question cannot be done by new technical setting.

3. In-media experience and internal considerations

Other concern is derived by in-media organizational experience. In the past one year, we have been thinking about constructing our own English website as there are some issues, such as the importation of disneyland and the democratic movement in Hong Kong, should be made more visible to the other parts of the world (I know that Seoul is going to have another disneyland).

Secondly, we have been getting alternative news sources from english alternative websites, however, it is very difficult for us to access news from non-English alternative news sources, such as Japana and Korea. And i think the story would be the same for other non-english base internet media.

Thirdly, having an English platform can probably help us to generate some internet donations from other parts of the world.

However, we probably do not have enough resources to maintain an english platform. And even if we have enough resources, we could not solve the problem of not getting alternative news sources from other non-english speaking sources. So the idea of doing it together with others non-english speaking counterparts came to us.

Some existing border crossing media experiences

- indymedia

- EastSouthWestNorth

- Global Voices Online

- Wikinews

- Ohmynews

Objectives

- to overcome language barriers and enhance cross-border dialogue on critical issues related to culture, gender, environment, social justice, peace, global/local politics, media movement, social movement and transformation, and etc.

- to encourage inter-locals dialogue and develop an inter-locals news source and information sharing network

- to set up a self-funded mechanicism for local independent media, individual bloggers and translators

- to form a border-crossing community of media, knowledge and translation activists.

How?

An English internet platform by using drupal (similar to chattergarden or dan gillmor's blog journalism) or other publication tools, free registration with an approval mechanism (explanation or referee system).

An editorial team to manage the mainpage with reference to a reader grading system; and a weekly mediascape digest of local issue.

A technical team to construct and maintain the website.

A translation and editorial mechanism / inter-local communities which involves communication among information providers (what do i want to tell you? why is that important?), translators (why and how should i translate it?) and users (what information do it need? why is it important to me?)

A micro payment system (paypal) which direct the donation to the information sources (organizations or the translators), as well as the platform.

An independent media network which open the copyrights for translating and using their news sources among the network members or the network will use creative commons license for non-commercial use.

Others...