Silvio Berlusconi remains the richest politician in the italian parliament. For 2011 he declared an income of 35,439.981 millions of Euro. Mario Monti, ex Prime Minister of Italy and life senator, is the third richest leader in italian politics, who has declared an income of 1,092.068 Euro.
To read more about the topic in italian please click here.
Here is an infographic that shows four wealthiest politicians in Italy. Are you jealous yet?
They feel at home whether they live in Paris or Beirut, they celebrate Oktoberfest with German friends in Munich and New Year’s Eve on Times Square, they are masters of new technologies and they easily converse in different languages with their friends and family. For them to relate to people in Moscow or Milan, with managers or engineers, does not make much difference. They are ready to understand different cultures, be it African or Russian. They have an open mind and they are always ready to live out of the box. They are the global nomads.
A Global nomad has got the world in his hands
To leave a nomadic life is not a new phenomenon. The history of man is full of people who lead wandering lifestyles, moving from one place to another in search for food and water. Nomads traditionally travelled in a group, on foot or by animals. They moved according to the seasons and lived in tents. They were never attached to one territory.
Today the term global nomad refers to people who lead highly mobile lives, grow up, study or work among different cultures and countries. Due to fast-growing technologies, globalization process and change of values in our society global nomads are continuously on the rise. Various life-long learning initiatives as Erasmus, Leonardo da Vinci, Grundtvig also facilitate the process of becoming a global nomad.
Global nomads feel no strong attachments to one particular country. Usually elements of different cultures are blended and coexist side by side. They feel they belong everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They are different from immigrants or expatriates: they have less social ties with the country where they were born. They are more adaptable, open, dynamic, mobile, multicultural and cosmopolitan.
Global nomads, however, might struggle to respond to such a simple question as “Where do you come from?” You will probably hear in reply: “well, I was born in a country X, but at the age of five I moved with my parents to a country Y and then I studied my Master’s in a country Z and now I live here.”
Global nomads stand out from the crowd
Italian writer Adrianna Dagnino in her book “Nuovi nomadi” (New nomads) writes that today’s nomadism is a state of mind, a metaphor that the reality is always in a state of flux and that life will constantly require adaptation. She defines global nomads of the third millennium as a new tribe without a territory, that makes an extensive use of mobile phones, computers, digital cameras to keep in touch with the rest of the world and to have a fixed reference point even within their highly transient lives. It is a new and yet old approach to existence that resembles borderless life of our ancestors.
illustrations by Jakub Krechowicz and Sanja Gjenero
According to UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics the number of international students has risen dramatically from 0.6 million worldwide in 1975 to more than three million in 2009. The number of international students is estimated to grow to eight million in 2025.
International student flows impact different countries in different ways. Some countries are the usual host destinations, while others see international students rarely, often only as a part of their studies. The United States remains the biggest destination for international students, followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. The largest numbers of international students are from China, India and Korea, followed by the students from the European Union. Asian students represent 52 % of foreign students enrolled worldwide. However, since 2000 the fastest growing regions of destinations for international students are Latin America, Caribbean and Asia.
Growth in international students enrolled outside of their home country (1975 – 2025, in million, source OECD and UNESCO)
Further information:
http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/
http://www.oecd.org/education/
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/
I have just returned home from a wonderful holiday in Israel & Palestine & Jordan. I know this post has nothing really to do with media or research or infographics or whatsoever, but I thought to share some pictures of THE WALL without adding a lot of comments…..the pictures are self-explanatory…
Palestinian refugee camp 2 kilometers north of Bethlehem
There is a nice restaurant in front of this Wall where we had lunch with the locals. The owner of the restaurant was projecting Football matches on the Wall every night during the UEFA 2012. Brilliant Idea! There is a nice article about that here.
A Palestinian house circulated by the wall….
BlogBooker is a nice free tool that creates a PDF book out of your personal blog. It is compatible with Blogger, WordPress and LiveJournal. All you have to do is submit an export file provided by your blog to BlogBooker and wait 3-5 minutes until all the files are checked and all the images are fetched and your Blog Book is ready!
Ahead is a web-based application that helps you to create cool, zooming presentations like Prezi and to publish and share it with anyone online. I thought Prezi was the best ever, but now since I have discovered Ahead…..mmmm I do not really know. There are both free and paid versions of Ahead. It is a very easy to use tool with a friendly interface. Check it out!
Circos is an amazing visualization free software that visualizes your data (plain text) in a circular layout. I have just started to explore this software…so far so good! Here is a nice intro to the tool.
2 cool mind maps online applications that I use when I need to brainstorm an idea or a home work are Cacoo and WiseMapping. Both are free once you create an account. However, Cacoo charges 4,95$ a month if you wish to get additional functionality like editing history or export in various formats.
Wadah Khanfar - ex director of Al Jazeera
Wadah Khanfar gave a Keynote speech at Teatro Pavone in Perugia that greatly inspired the audience, including me. To be honest, it was probably the most interesting and, in a sense, revolutionary speech at the festival. He resigned from Al Jazeera a few months ago because, according to his speech, he wanted to become part of a new media that is going through a huge transformation period that, eventually, will lead to futuristic integral media that will use more and more citizen journalism. He said that big news corporations that only seek to be competitive with other newsrooms and to broadcast VIP people will DIE! They will die also because they often forget that their mission is to serve the people and not interests, power, governments or organizations. During his speech, he noted many times that social media and the bloggers are the future and that big news organizations will turn more and more to Facebook, Twitter or whatever comes next, to gather news stories. Due to high expenses, news organizations will no longer send their correspondents, journalists to places to cover the events; they will use zero costs or low costs citizen journalists via social media. Wadah Khanfar encouraged everyone in the audience to become more media active and start producing stories with your smart phones or other devices that are relevant to you or a small group of people. The last but not the least, he challenged the audience by saying that a good journalist, if he knows that his news organization serves the interests of not only the people, should resign! Indeed, a fresh way at looking at the current and future state of the media.
Charlie Beckett - director POLIS London School of Economics; Evgeny Morozov - journalist, author of "The Net Delusion"
I also enjoyed very much 3 panel discussions with Evgeny Morozov – the author of “The Net Delusion”.
Kristinn Hrafnsson - spokesperson of Wikileaks
After a panel discussion on “Wikileaks. The Italian Secrets”, I had a short chat with Kristinn Hrafnsson on the case of the US soldier Bradley Manning.
Andy Carvin - National Public Radio
Andy Carvin, National Public Radio’s senior product manager for online communities, also gave an inspiring Kaynote Speech at Teatro Pavone. The Columbia Journalism Review referred to Carvin as a “living, breathing real-time verification system” and suggested his might be the best Twitter account to follow in the world. Andy used his Twitter account to cover the breaking news about the Arab Spring. In 2011, he and his Twitter followers utilized crowd sourced research to debunk false stories that Israeli weapons were being used against the people of Libya. Here is an interesting article from the Guardian who calls him “the man who tweets revolutions”.
I have just come back from the International Festival of Journalism in Perugia where I participated in more than 40 discussion panels and workshops in 4 days. I am amazed how my brain managed to squeeze so much new information about the current and the future state of the media in Europe and not only. A part from really really bad internet connection at the festival, the organization, including very helpful volunteers and staff, was simply great. I will dedicate a few more separate posts about the most interesting workshops and speeches I have attended. I am already missing Perugia and can’t wait to join the festival next year.
Italian news websites and their Facebook Fans
German news websites and their Facebook Fans
English news websites without BBC and their Facebook Fans. BBC on March 31, 2012 had more than 1, 746, 126 Fans.
In January 2012 Eurobarometer has published a qualitative study on the use of social media by journalists. The study consisted of interviews with 5 journalists in each of the 27 Member States countries. Most of the journalists had ten to twenty years of experience, mainly in one type of media. Interesting to note, that most of them preferred to use social media in their own language, even though they can speak and work in English.
Most of the journalists interviewed use social media at work, especially Facebook and Twitter. However most journalists use Facebook also for private affairs, whereas Twitter predominately for work. Among other social tools the journalists indicated Myspace, YouTube, Blogs and Wikis. There is probably nothing new in the results. But have a look at the mind maps. Twitter and Facebook in use by journalists at work across European countries.
The two maps looked almost the same. Check these two mind maps of the usage of Twitter and Facebook privately, outside the working environment. There is a clear distinction between Twitter and Facebook use. Facebook – use a lot also for private use; Twitter – only at work.
The journalists were also asked to specify the reasons for using social media at work and, as it turned out, most of the journalists are passive users who just check what is going on on certain web sites in order to be up-to-date. There are also active users who search for information and supplement traditional sources, but not replace them. There is also a small number of interactive users who actually inform the audience about their programmes, communicate their messages to the people and respond to various posts.
Journalists do use social media tools like Facebook or Twitter in a passive, active or interactive way. The main findings of the study concluded that social media is, by now, considered to be useful for newsrooms and very easy to use.
Reference
Eurobarometer Qualitative Study (2012): Journalism and Social Media. Last accessed 27 March, 2012. http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/quali/journsm_en.pdf
An awful sleepless night before my last exam this winter session in Media Politics, Globalization, Ethics and Law. 6 a.m 23 of March Friday. Shower – done. Breakfast – done. Take the dog outside – yessss. Nice clothes to wear – ready. Time to check my emails. 27 e-mails, as usual nothing seemed new or interesting – Facebook, Twitter, Groupon – Liliana Bounegru: Place offer (please confirm asap). Really? 8 a.m. time to go. To go where? Exam? What exam? Who cares after all?
I was offered a place to take part in a Data-driven journalism workshop “Getting stories from Data” at the International Festival of Journalism in Perugia (Italy). The festival takes place every year in Perugia. It offeres many free panels, workshops, documentaries, keynote speeches and many more activities. Journalists, students, media specialists, news agencies from all over the world gather to discuss the current media trends in the society.
Among the 400 speakers who will attend the festival this year are: Kristinn Hrafnsson – spokesperson for WikiLeaks, Wolfgang Blau – editor of Die Zeit, Roman Anin – investigative journalist from Novaya Gazeta, Clive Edwards – ex editor for current affairs at BBC, Evgeny Morozov – journalist and author of the Net Delusion, Marco Travaglio and many more.
Cheap German wings tickets – bought. A nice hotel in the center of Perugia – booked. Subscription to various workshops – done. Speakers for the possible interviews – contacted. And now – a lot of patience.
Media Research Lab 