Aftenposten versus Facebook: triggering a crucial debate

The increasing role that social media sites play in news distribution raises several concerns. Espen Egil Hansen of Aftenposten (Norway) and Richard Allan of Facebook come from different worlds, yet face a similar challenge.
It is an icon of war photography: the black-and-white image reveals a naked nine- year-old girl, fleeing from an explosion, screaming, her face distorted with pain. Taken by Vietnamese-American photographer, Nick Ut, during the napalm strike on a Vietnamese village in 1972, the Pulitzer prize-winning photo, “The Terror of War”,(link is external) raised controversy in 2016, when Facebook banned it because of “inappropriate content”.

My face, my land

Five continents, five years of encounters, tens of thousands of kilometres travelled, and in the end, there is one single conclusion: we are ONE humankind. This is how French photographer and visual artist Bēni (link is external)sums up the IDENTiTESproject(link is external) odyssey, which he launched in 2013. It is a multifaceted photographic adventure that is taking him to the four corners of the planet. From Hanoi to La Paz, via Accra, Bēni’s lens captures the faces of the world and brings them together in an impressive series of portraits. “We set off for somewhere else, for something different, for the other, only to end up finding ourselves,” he explains.

Humanitude, or how to quench the thirst for humanity

Faced with the failure of the western model of development, which puts the culture of having before the culture of being, it is becoming urgent to develop a different project for society – one that is founded upon humanitude, a concept that explores openness to the Other, the only possible way out for a disenchanted world.
It has become commonplace to say that our world, which is in the grips of a multidimensional and seemingly never-ending crisis, is in very, very bad shape. This crisis, in fact, reveals a loss of meaning, reinforced by a trend towards the homogenization of the world’s cultures, brought on by an accelerated globalization of markets. This is leading to a veritable dehumanization of relations between individuals, peoples, and states. The recent environmental, energy, demographic, and digital challenges − added to the existing inequalities and poverty − accentuate the widespread feeling of existential angst and a lack of confidence in the future.

Dawit Isaak: a symbol of press freedom who must be freed

Dawit Isaak has become an international symbol in the fight for press freedom. He was awarded the 2017 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, which his family says has served to rekindle the hope that he will be freed soon.

It is nearly sixteen years since the journalist, playwright and author, Dawit Isaak, was imprisoned without trial in his native Eritrea. Isaak, who was awarded the 2017 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, has become a household name in Sweden (of which he is a citizen and where his three children and other family members currently reside). A portrait of Isaak from the late 1980s has become an international symbol in the fight for press freedom and the freedom of expression. Isaak has  been named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International,(link is external) which has called for his immediate and unconditional release.

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