The 176 finalists of the BOBs 2008, Deutsche Welle's international blog competition, will be unveiled on the BOBs website, www.thebobs.com, on 27 October.Vote for your favourite one!
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New record: 8,000 entries for Deutsche Welle's international blog competition
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The 176 finalists of the BOBs 2008, Deutsche Welle's international blog competition, will be unveiled on the BOBs website, www.thebobs.com, on 27 October. Bloggers around the world have proposed more than 8,500 candidates in the competition's 16 categories in the past few weeks. This is a 20 per cent increase on last year. An international jury of renowned bloggers has nominated 11 finalists in each of the categories. Internet users now have until 26 November to vote for their favourite bogs in order to choose the public's prize.
The BOBs are awarded for blogs, podcasts and videoblogs written or produced in one of the following 11 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and, for the first time, Indonesian.
Deutsche Welle's goal in organising this competition is to promote freedom of opinion and press freedom throughout the world. The prize also aims to reflect the international blogosphere's variety and to encourage a dialogue around this new form of communication that surpasses language barriers.
Bloggers under surveillance
This year's crop of finalists include many candidates with a daily commitment to the defence of human rights and, in particular, free expression - such as Cuban blogger and dissident Yoani Sánchez and her Chinese counterpart Zeng Jinyan, the wife of Hu Hia, who has just been awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament. Aged 25, Zeng has been under house arrest for months. In her blog, she describes her life under constant surveillance by the Chinese police.
The BOBs jury will meet on 26 November in Berlin to choose the winners, who will be announced by Deutsche Welle at an evening event on 27 November at the Museum of Communication. It will start at 8 p.m. and admission will be free.
Our partners
Reporters Without Borders and Radio Netherlands are the BOBs' Premium Partners. The media partners are: Al Arabiya, Arabic Media Internet Network, arte, blog.de, Bright, cafébabel.com, Categorynet.com, Clarín, de Volkskrant, Die Zeit, El Tiempo, Folha Online, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano, Global Voices, Gooya, Handelsblatt.com, Iran-emrooz.net, Knack.be, Lenta.ru, Livejournal.ru, Mister Wong, Netvibes, newthinking, Radio Zamaneh, RTVE Cámara Abierta, Sina.com.cn, Six Apart, startlog.nl, Technorati, TV5Monde and UOL.
The BOBs 2008 competition is kindly supported by Hewlett-Packard, HTC, Freecom, O'Reilly and Sevenload.
Examples of selected blogs
contact:
Anne Le Touzé -
[email protected] - T. +49(0)228.429-4929
www.thebobs.com/french
www.dw-world.de/french