Threatened voices is using crowd sourcing to draw attention to people’s attention bloggers around the world that have been arrested for their blogging content or those that have been threatened or even murdered. From the statistics it is clear to see countries in which threatening behaviour towards blog owners is prevalent. I think that it is a good tool as it helps to highlight hot spots for this kind of behaviour. From the world map I can see China has the highest population of owners showing threatening behaviour with Egypt and Iran coming in Second and third, these stats make you question why people in these countries feel so strongly and actually act threateningly towards people. These stats also make you wonder whether these statistics follow a trend.
This tool is very insightful but it is hugely flawed, when viewing this website you must take into consideration the face that some of these acts may go unreported, these are only statistic based on individuals that have been prosecuted.
The website also enables you to become a tracker and to report any such crimes if they occur, they themselves are acknowledging these figures are not highly accurate. In a sense it is hard to take Threatened Voices as an accurate statistical website but it tries.
In all Freedom of speech is something which has been argued for, for years. Should people really be arrested or even threatened for expressing their views, something which they have a right to. Some of these convictions may be due to individuals speaking out over oppressions, many of these convictions are found in areas where freedom of expression is at an all time low.
Tags: extremist blogging
