Welcome to Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum

Maidan, Rio de Janeiro, Gezi Park, Tahrir Square – they have all become symbols of a global trend toward more active participation, community involvement and interest in political processes and decision-making. The media play an increasingly prominent role in this development, especially social networking channels. The Internet provides an infrastructure that enables more and more people to participate in influencing social change. It has become an indispensable part of global society.

Shaping the debates at this year's conference under the title "From Information to Participation – Challenges for the Media" are the opportunities and dangers of the digital world and how they impact the real world. This year marks the seventh anniversary of the conference series, and once again more than 2,000 participants, including 500 journalists, from 100 nations are expected to attend. The congress will be held in the World Conference Center in Bonn, Germany, and comprises around 40 separate workshops and special events, where 190 guest speakers will contribute their expertise.

U.S. journalist, blogger and author Jeff Jarvis is one of the renowned panelists taking part in the "Media summit" that will kick off the conference on Monday morning. He will be joined by Salah Negmof the Al Jazeera news channel and Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer SE, among others.

"Political opinion-making in the digital age" is the topic of the main panel discussion on Tuesday, July 1. Immediately afterward, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will address the conference theme from a foreign policy perspective (“Digitalization and participation: A foreign policy view”) and respond to questions from the audience. On Tuesday afternoon, a "Transatlantic talk" will examine the state of U.S.-European relations in light of the NSA surveillance scandal.

On Wednesday, July 2, a plenary session will explore the question of how we can counteract our extensive loss of personal privacy through the Internet. Among the high-profile panelists is British journalist and Snowden ally Sarah Harrison.

On the subject of cyber security, participants will be presented with tips and advice on encrypting their communications at a series of CryptoParties, which will be held as side events specifically aimed at journalists.

The 2014 BOBs Awards ceremony

The main winners of this year's annual DW international competition, The BOBs – Best of Online Activism, will be honored at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, June 30. Among the award recipients is photoblogger Mosa'ab Elshamy from Egypt.

Live broadcasts

Deutsche Welle's TV programming will include special live reports from the conference, covering for instance the opening session beginning at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, June 30, the "Media summit"and the BOBs Awards ceremony beginning at 5:30 p.m. CET. There will also be live broadcasts of all the events scheduled to take place in the main plenary chamber of the World Conference Center in Bonn. To watch the live stream, go to www.dw.de.

Special services for journalists:

• Registration for the Global Media Forum is open at the conference venue on all the three days of the event.
• For more information about the conference, go to www.dw-gmf.de.
• Photographs from all the events will be posted continuously at flickr.com/deutschewelle/collections.

Alternatively, photos are available upon request from Lisa Flanakin, Tel. +49 173 850 7281

• To watch the live stream of selected events, go to www.dw.de/media-center/live-tv/s-100825/channel/9798
• Follow the Global Media Forum on a variety of social media networks:
• Twitter.com/dw_gmf (English); twitter.com/deutschewelle (German)
• Twitter hashtags:#dw_gmf and#be_part
• facebook.com/dw.gmf (English) and facebook.com/dw.deutschewelle (German)
• YouTube.com/GMFconference
• Audio recordings of the events will be made available continuously on soundcloud.com/dwgmf. You can download the files in MP3 format.

International partners and co-hosts

DW's national and international partners for the 2014 Global Media Forum include, among others, Amnesty International, Deutsche Telekom, the Grimme-Institut, NATO, the United Nations, the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications and Voices of Africa.

The conference is co-hosted by the Foundation for International Dialogue of the Sparkasse Savings Bank in Bonn. Support is also kindly provided by Germany's Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the City of Bonn. Cooperation partner is The Right Livelihood College Campus Bonn.