பகுப்பு:
Blog
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A
blog (a truncation of the expression
weblog)
[1] is a discussion or informational site published on the
World Wide Web
and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in
reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Until
2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual
[citation needed],
occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject. More
recently "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed, with posts written
by large numbers of authors and professionally edited. MABs from
newspapers, other media outlets,
universities,
think tanks,
advocacy groups and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of
Twitter and other "
microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into societal newstreams.
Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning
to maintain or add content to a blog.
The emergence and growth of blogs in the late 1990s coincided with the advent of
web publishing tools that facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users. (Previously, a knowledge of such technologies as
HTML and
FTP had been required to publish content on the Web.)
A majority are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via
GUI widgets on the blogs, and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.
[2] In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of
social networking service.
Indeed, bloggers do not only produce content to post on their blogs,
but also build social relations with their readers and other bloggers.
[3] However, there are high-readership blogs which do not allow comments, such as
Daring Fireball.
Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject; others function as more personal
online diaries; others function more as
online brand advertising of a particular individual or company. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs,
Web pages,
and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave
comments in an interactive format is an important contribution to the
popularity of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although
some focus on art (
art blogs), photographs (
photoblogs), videos (
video blogs or "vlogs"), music (
MP3 blogs), and audio (
podcasts).
Microblogging
is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts. In education,
blogs can be used as instructional resources. These blogs are referred
to as
edublogs.
On 16 February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence. On 20 February 2014, there were around 172 million
Tumblr[4] and 75.8 million
WordPress[5] blogs in existence worldwide. According to critics and other bloggers,
Blogger is the most popular blogging service used today, however Blogger does not offer public statistics.
[6][7] Technorati has 1.3 million blogs as of February 22, 2014
[8]
History
Early example of a "diary" style blog consisting of text and images transmitted wirelessly in real time from a
wearable computer with
head-up display, 22 February 1995
The term "weblog" was coined by
Jorn Barger[9] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog", was coined by
Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word
weblog into the phrase
we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.
[10][11][12] Shortly thereafter,
Evan Williams at
Pyra Labs
used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog", meaning "to edit one's
weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in
connection with Pyra Labs'
Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms.
[13]
Origins
Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including
Usenet, commercial online services such as
GEnie, BiX and the early
CompuServe,
e-mail lists[14] and
Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). In the 1990s,
Internet forum software, created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections between messages on a virtual "
corkboard".
From 14 June 1993 Mosaic Communications Corporation maintained their "What’s New"
[15]
list of new websites, updated daily and archived monthly. The page was
accessible by a special "What's New" button in the Mosaic web browser.
The modern blog evolved from the
online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists,
journalists, or journalers.
Justin Hall, who began personal blogging in 1994 while a student at
Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earlier bloggers,
[16] as is
Jerry Pournelle.
[17] Dave Winer's Scripting News is also credited with being one of the older and longer running weblogs.
[18][19] The Australian Netguide magazine maintained the Daily Net News
[20]
on their web site from 1996. Daily Net News ran links and daily reviews
of new websites, mostly in Australia. Another early blog was Wearable
Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life
combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable
computer and
EyeTap device to a web site in 1994. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as
sousveillance, and such journals were also used as evidence in legal matters.
Early blogs were simply manually updated components of common
Web sites.
However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and
maintenance of Web articles posted in reverse chronological order made
the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical,
population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online
publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use
of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of
"blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated
blog hosting services, or they can be run using
blog software, or on regular
web hosting services.
Some early bloggers, such as
The Misanthropic Bitch, who began in 1997, actually referred to their online presence as a
zine, before the term blog entered common usage.
Rise in popularity
After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage
spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized
by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:
Political impact
On 6 December 2002, Josh Marshall's talkingpointsmemo.com blog called attention to U.S. Senator
Lott's comments regarding Senator Thurmond. Senator Lott was eventually to resign his Senate leadership position over the matter.
An early milestone in the rise in importance of blogs came in 2002, when many bloggers focused on comments by
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.
[22] Senator Lott, at a party honoring
U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond,
praised Senator Thurmond by suggesting that the United States would
have been better off had Thurmond been elected president. Lott's critics
saw these comments as a tacit approval of
racial segregation, a policy advocated by Thurmond's
1948 presidential campaign. This view was reinforced by documents and recorded interviews dug up by bloggers. (See
Josh Marshall's
Talking Points Memo.)
Though Lott's comments were made at a public event attended by the
media, no major media organizations reported on his controversial
comments until after blogs broke the story. Blogging helped to create a
political crisis that forced Lott to step down as majority leader.
Similarly, blogs were among the driving forces behind the "
Rathergate" scandal. To wit: (television journalist)
Dan Rather presented documents (on the CBS show
60 Minutes) that conflicted with accepted accounts of President Bush's military service record. Bloggers declared the documents to be
forgeries
and presented evidence and arguments in support of that view.
Consequently, CBS apologized for what it said were inadequate reporting
techniques (see
Little Green Footballs).
Many bloggers view this scandal as the advent of blogs' acceptance by
the mass media, both as a news source and opinion and as means of
applying political pressure.
[original research?]
The impact of these stories gave greater credibility to blogs as a
medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips,
[citation needed]
bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public
light, with mainstream media having to follow their lead. More often,
however, news blogs tend to react to material already published by the
mainstream media. Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts blogged,
making blogs a source of in-depth analysis.
[original research?]
In
Russia,
some political bloggers have started to challenge the dominance of
official, overwhelmingly pro-government media. Bloggers such as
Rustem Adagamov and
Alexei Navalny have many followers and the latter's nickname for the ruling
United Russia party as the "party of crooks and thieves" and been adopted by anti-regime protesters.
[23] This led to the
Wall Street Journal calling Navalny "the man
Vladimir Putin fears most" in March 2012.
[24]
Mainstream popularity
By 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as
political consultants,
news services, and candidates began using them as tools for outreach
and opinion forming. Blogging was established by politicians and
political candidates to express opinions on war and other issues and
cemented blogs' role as a news source. (See
Howard Dean and
Wesley Clark.) Even politicians not actively campaigning, such as the
UK's Labour Party's MP Tom Watson, began to blog to bond with constituents.
In January 2005,
Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers whom business people "could not ignore":
Peter Rojas,
Xeni Jardin,
Ben Trott,
Mena Trott,
Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman,
Robert Scoble, and
Jason Calacanis.
[25]
Israel was among the first national governments to set up an official blog.
[26] Under
David Saranga, the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs became active in adopting
Web 2.0 initiatives, including an official
video blog[26] and a
political blog.
[27] The Foreign Ministry also held a
microblogging press conference via
Twitter about its
war with Hamas, with Saranga answering questions from the public in common text-messaging abbreviations during a live worldwide
press conference.
[28] The questions and answers were later posted on
IsraelPolitik, the country's official political blog.
[29]
The impact of blogging upon the mainstream media has also been
acknowledged by governments. In 2009, the presence of the American
journalism industry had declined to the point that several newspaper
corporations were filing for bankruptcy, resulting in less direct
competition between newspapers within the same circulation area.
Discussion emerged as to whether the newspaper industry would benefit
from a stimulus package by the federal government. U.S. President
Barack Obama
acknowledged the emerging influence of blogging upon society by saying
"if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no
serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context,
then what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other
across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding”.
[30]
Between 2009 and 2012 an
Orwell Prize for blogging was awarded.
Types
There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the
type of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or
written.
- Personal blogs
- The personal blog is an ongoing diary or commentary written by an individual.
- Collaborative blogs or group blogs
- a type of weblog
in which posts are written and published by more than one author. The
majority of high-profile collaborative blogs are based around a single
uniting theme, such as politics or technology. In recent years, the blogosphere
has seen the emergence and growing popularity of more collaborative
efforts, often set up by already established bloggers wishing to pool
time and resources to both reduce the pressure of maintaining a popular
website and to attract a larger readership.
- Microblogging
- Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital
content—which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other
media—on the Internet. Microblogging offers a portable communication
mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many and has captured the
public imagination. Friends use it to keep in touch, business associates
use it to coordinate meetings or share useful resources, and
celebrities and politicians (or their publicists) microblog about
concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour schedules. A wide and
growing range of add-on tools enables sophisticated updates and
interaction with other applications, and the resulting profusion of
functionality is helping to define new possibilities for this type of
communication.[31] Examples of these include Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and by far the largest WeiBo.
- Corporate and organizational blogs
- A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are called corporate blogs.
Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group
blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to inform members and other
interested parties of club and member activities.
- By genre
- Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, health blogs, travel blogs (also known as travelogs), gardening blogs, house blogs, book blogs, [32][33] fashion blogs, project blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, classical music blogs, quizzing blogs and legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs) or dreamlogs. How To/Tutorial blogs are becoming increasing popular.[34] Two common types of genre blogs are art blogs and music blogs. A blog featuring discussions especially about home and family is not uncommonly called a mom blog and one made popular is by Erica Diamond who created Womenonthefence.com which is syndicated to over two million readers monthly.[35][36][37][38][39][40] While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is known as a Splog.
- By media type
- A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumblelogs. Blogs that are written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast or typecast blogs; see typecasting (blogging).
- A rare type of blog hosted on the Gopher Protocol is known as a Phlog.
- By device
- Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog.[41]
One early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a
person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted
live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance. Such journals have been used as evidence in legal matters.[citation needed]
- Reverse blog
- A Reverse Blog is composed by its users rather than a single
blogger. This system has the characteristics of a blog, and the writing
of several authors. These can be written by several contributing authors
on a topic, or opened up for anyone to write. There is typically some
limit to the number of entries to keep it from operating like a Web Forum.[citation needed]
Community and cataloging
- The Blogosphere
- The collective community of all blogs is known as the blogosphere. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked, through blogrolls, comments, linkbacks
(refbacks, trackbacks or pingbacks) and backlinks. Discussions "in the
blogosphere" are occasionally used by the media as a gauge of public
opinion on various issues. Because new, untapped communities of bloggers
and their readers can emerge in the space of a few years, Internet marketers pay close attention to "trends in the blogosphere".[42]
- Blog search engines
- Several blog search engines have been used to search blog contents, such as Bloglines, BlogScope, and Technorati.
Technorati was one of the more popular blog search engines, but the
website stopped indexing blogs and assigning authority scores in May
2014. Blogscope shut down early in 2012. The research community is
working on going beyond simple keyword search, by inventing new ways to
navigate through huge amounts of information present in the blogosphere, as demonstrated by projects like BlogScope, which was shut down in 2012.[citation needed]
- Blogging communities and directories
- Several online communities exist that connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers, including BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog.[43] Interest-specific blogging platforms are also available. For instance, Blogster has a sizable community of political bloggers among its members. Global Voices aggregates international bloggers, "with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media."[44]
- Blogging and advertising
- It is common for blogs to feature advertisements either to
financially benefit the blogger or to promote the blogger's favorite
causes. The popularity of blogs has also given rise to "fake blogs" in which a company will create a fictional blog as a marketing tool to promote a product.[45]
Popularity
Researchers have actively analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become
popular. There are essentially two measures of this: popularity through
citations, as well as popularity through affiliation (i.e.,
blogroll).
The basic conclusion from studies of the structure of blogs is that
while it takes time for a blog to become popular through blogrolls,
permalinks
can boost popularity more quickly, and are perhaps more indicative of
popularity and authority than blogrolls, since they denote that people
are actually reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or
noteworthy in specific cases.
[46]
The
blogdex project was launched by researchers in the
MIT Media Lab
to crawl the Web and gather data from thousands of blogs in order to
investigate their social properties. Information was gathered by the
tool for over four years, during which it autonomously tracked the most
contagious information spreading in the blog community, ranking it by
recency and popularity. It can therefore
[original research?] be considered the first instantiation of a
memetracker. The project was replaced by
tailrank.com which in turn has been replaced by spinn3r.com.
Blogs are given rankings by
Alexa Internet (web hits of Alexa Toolbar users), and formerly by blog search engine
Technorati
based on the number of incoming links (Technorati stopped doing this in
2014). In August 2006, Technorati found that the most linked-to blog on
the internet was that of Chinese actress
Xu Jinglei.
[47] Chinese media
Xinhua reported that this blog received more than 50 million page views, claiming it to be the most popular blog in the world.
[48] Technorati rated
Boing Boing to be the most-read group-written blog.
[47]
Blurring with the mass media
Many bloggers, particularly those engaged in
participatory journalism, differentiate themselves from the
mainstream media,
while others are members of that media working through a different
channel. Some institutions see blogging as a means of "getting around
the filter" and pushing
messages directly to the public. Some critics
[who?] worry that bloggers respect neither
copyright nor the role of the
mass media in presenting society with credible news. Bloggers and other contributors to
user-generated content are behind
Time magazine naming their 2006
person of the year as "You".
Many mainstream journalists, meanwhile, write their own blogs—well over 300, according to
CyberJournalist.net's J-blog list.
[citation needed] The first known use of a blog on a news site was in August 1998, when
Jonathan Dube of The
Charlotte Observer published one chronicling
Hurricane Bonnie.
[49]
Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television:
Duncan Black (known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios),
Glenn Reynolds (
Instapundit),
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (
Daily Kos),
Alex Steffen (
Worldchanging),
Ana Marie Cox (
Wonkette),
Nate Silver (
FiveThirtyEight.com), and
Ezra Klein (Ezra Klein blog in
The American Prospect, now in the
Washington Post). In counterpoint,
Hugh Hewitt
exemplifies a mass media personality who has moved in the other
direction, adding to his reach in "old media" by being an influential
blogger. Similarly, it was
Emergency Preparedness and Safety Tips On Air and Online blog articles that captured
Surgeon General of the United States Richard Carmona's attention and earned his kudos for the associated broadcasts by talk show host
Lisa Tolliver and Westchester Emergency Volunteer Reserves-
Medical Reserve Corps Director Marianne Partridge.
[50][51][52][53]
Blogs have also had an influence on
minority languages, bringing together scattered speakers and learners; this is particularly so with blogs in
Gaelic languages. Minority language publishing (which may lack economic feasibility) can find its audience through inexpensive blogging.
There are many examples of bloggers who have published books based on their blogs, e.g.,
Salam Pax,
Ellen Simonetti,
Jessica Cutler,
ScrappleFace. Blog-based books have been given the name
blook. A prize for the best blog-based book was initiated in 2005,
[54] the
Lulu Blooker Prize.
[55] However, success has been elusive offline, with many of these books not selling as well as their blogs. Only blogger
Tucker Max made
The New York Times Best Seller list.
[56] The book based on
Julie Powell's blog "The Julie/Julia Project" was made into the film
Julie & Julia, apparently the first to do so.
Consumer-generated advertising in blogs
Consumer-generated advertising
is a relatively new and controversial development and it has created a
new model of marketing communication from businesses to consumers. Among
the various forms of advertising on blog, the most controversial are
the
sponsored posts.
[57]
These are blog entries or posts and may be in the form of feedback,
reviews, opinion, videos, etc. and usually contain a link back to the
desired site using a keyword/s.
Blogs have led to some
disintermediation
and a breakdown of the traditional advertising model where companies
can skip over the advertising agencies (previously the only interface
with the customer) and contact the customers directly themselves. On the
other hand, new companies specialised in blog advertising have been
established, to take advantage of this new development as well.
However, there are many people who look negatively on this new
development. Some believe that any form of commercial activity on blogs
will destroy the blogosphere’s credibility.
[58] The interaction of the blogosphere with economics has become known as
blogonomics.
[59]
Legal and social consequences
Blogging can result in a range of legal liabilities and other unforeseen consequences.
[60]
Defamation or liability
Several cases have been brought before the national courts against bloggers concerning issues of
defamation or liability. U.S. payouts related to blogging totaled $17.4 million by 2009; in some cases these have been covered by
umbrella insurance.
[61] The courts have returned with mixed verdicts.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), in general, are immune from liability for information that originates with third parties (U.S.
Communications Decency Act and the EU Directive 2000/31/EC).
In
Doe v. Cahill, the
Delaware Supreme Court held that stringent standards had to be met to unmask the
anonymous bloggers,
and also took the unusual step of dismissing the libel case itself (as
unfounded under American libel law) rather than referring it back to the
trial court for reconsideration.
[62]
In a bizarre twist, the Cahills were able to obtain the identity of
John Doe, who turned out to be the person they suspected: the town's
mayor, Councilman Cahill's political rival. The Cahills amended their
original complaint, and the mayor settled the case rather than going to
trial.
In January 2007, two prominent
Malaysian political bloggers,
Jeff Ooi and
Ahirudin Attan,
were sued by a pro-government newspaper, The New Straits Times Press
(Malaysia) Berhad, Kalimullah bin Masheerul Hassan, Hishamuddin bin Aun
and Brenden John a/l John Pereira over an alleged defamation. The
plaintiff was supported by the Malaysian government.
[63]
Following the suit, the Malaysian government proposed to "register" all
bloggers in Malaysia in order to better control parties against their
interest.
[64] This is the first such legal case against bloggers in the country.
In the United States, blogger Aaron Wall was sued by Traffic Power for
defamation and publication of
trade secrets in 2005.
[65] According to Wired Magazine, Traffic Power had been "banned from Google for allegedly rigging search engine results."
[66] Wall and other "
white hat"
search engine optimization
consultants had exposed Traffic Power in what they claim was an effort
to protect the public. The case addressed the murky legal question of
who is liable for comments posted on blogs.
[67] The case was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, and Traffic Power failed to appeal within the allowed time.
[68]
In 2009, a controversial and landmark decision by
The Hon. Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of
Richard Horton. Horton was a police officer in the United Kingdom who blogged about his job under the name "NightJack".
[69]
In 2009,
NDTV issued a legal notice to Indian blogger Kunte for a blog post criticizing their coverage of the
Mumbai attacks.
[70]
The blogger unconditionally withdrew his post, which resulted in
several Indian bloggers criticizing NDTV for trying to silence critics.
[71]
Employment
Employees who blog about elements of their place of employment can begin to affect the
brand recognition
of their employer. In general, attempts by employee bloggers to protect
themselves by maintaining anonymity have proved ineffective.
[72]
Delta Air Lines fired
flight attendant Ellen Simonetti
because she posted photographs of herself in uniform on an airplane and
because of comments posted on her blog "Queen of Sky: Diary of a Flight
Attendant" which the employer deemed inappropriate.
[73][74]
This case highlighted the issue of personal blogging and freedom of
expression versus employer rights and responsibilities, and so it
received wide media attention. Simonetti took legal action against the
airline for "wrongful termination, defamation of character and lost
future wages".
[75] The suit was postponed while Delta was in bankruptcy proceedings.
[76]
In early 2006, Erik Ringmar, a senior lecturer at the
London School of Economics,
was ordered by the convenor of his department to "take down and
destroy" his blog in which he discussed the quality of education at the
school.
[77]
Mark Cuban, owner of the
Dallas Mavericks, was fined during the 2006
NBA playoffs for criticizing NBA officials on the court and in his blog.
[78]
Mark Jen was terminated in 2005 after 10 days of employment as an Assistant Product Manager at
Google for discussing corporate secrets on his personal blog, then called 99zeros and hosted on the Google-owned
Blogger service.
[79]
He blogged about unreleased products and company finances a week before
the company's earnings announcement. He was fired two days after he
complied with his employer's request to remove the sensitive material
from his blog.
[80]
In India, blogger Gaurav Sabnis resigned from
IBM after his posts questioned the claims of a management school IIPM.
[81]
Jessica Cutler, aka "The Washingtonienne",
[82] blogged about her sex life while employed as a congressional assistant. After the blog was discovered and she was fired,
[83] she wrote a novel based on her experiences and blog:
The Washingtonienne: A Novel.
Cutler is presently being sued by one of her former lovers in a case
that could establish the extent to which bloggers are obligated to
protect the privacy of their real life associates.
[84]
Catherine Sanderson, a.k.a.
Petite Anglaise, lost her job in Paris at a British accountancy firm because of blogging.
[85]
Although given in the blog in a fairly anonymous manner, some of the
descriptions of the firm and some of its people were less than
flattering. Sanderson later won a compensation claim case against the
British firm, however.
[86]
On the other hand,
Penelope Trunk wrote an upbeat article in the
Boston Globe back in 2006, entitled "Blogs 'essential' to a good career".
[87]
She was one of the first journalists to point out that a large portion
of bloggers are professionals and that a well-written blog can help
attract employers.
Political dangers
Blogging can sometimes have unforeseen consequences in politically
sensitive areas. Blogs are much harder to control than broadcast or even
print media. As a result,
totalitarian and
authoritarian regimes often seek to suppress blogs and/or to punish those who maintain them.
In
Singapore, two ethnic Chinese were
imprisoned under the country’s
anti-sedition law for posting
anti-Muslim remarks in their blogs.
[88]
Egyptian blogger
Kareem Amer was charged with insulting the Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak and an
Islamic institution
through his blog. It is the first time in the history of Egypt that a
blogger was prosecuted. After a brief trial session that took place in
Alexandria, the blogger was found guilty and sentenced to prison terms of three years for insulting
Islam and inciting sedition, and one year for insulting Mubarak.
[89]
Egyptian blogger Abdel Monem Mahmoud was arrested in April 2007 for anti-government writings in his blog.
[90] Monem is a member of the then banned
Muslim Brotherhood.
After the
2011 Egyptian revolution, the Egyptian blogger
Maikel Nabil Sanad was charged with insulting the military for an article he wrote on his personal blog and sentenced to 3 years.
[91]
After expressing opinions in his personal blog about the state of the Sudanese armed forces,
Jan Pronk,
United Nations Special Representative for the
Sudan, was given three days notice to leave Sudan. The Sudanese army had demanded his deportation.
[92][93]
In
Myanmar, Nay Phone Latt, a blogger, was sentenced to 20 years in jail for posting a cartoon critical of head of state
Than Shwe.
[94]
Personal safety
One consequence of blogging is the possibility of attacks or threats against the blogger, sometimes without apparent reason.
Kathy Sierra, author of the innocuous blog "Creating Passionate Users",
[95]
was the target of such vicious threats and misogynistic insults that
she canceled her keynote speech at a technology conference in San Diego,
fearing for her safety.
[96] While a blogger's anonymity is often tenuous,
Internet trolls
who would attack a blogger with threats or insults can be emboldened by
anonymity. Sierra and supporters initiated an online discussion aimed
at countering abusive online behavior
[97] and developed a
blogger's code of conduct.
Behavior
The
Blogger's Code of Conduct is a proposal by
Tim O'Reilly
for bloggers to enforce civility on their blogs by being civil
themselves and moderating comments on their blog. The code was proposed
in 2007 due to threats made to blogger
Kathy Sierra.
[98] The idea of the code was first reported by
BBC News,
who quoted O'Reilly saying, "I do think we need some code of conduct
around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn't come
through any kind of regulation it would come through self-regulation."
[99]
O'Reilly and others came up with a list of seven proposed ideas:
[100][101][102][103]
- Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
- Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
- Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
- Ignore the trolls.
- Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
- If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
- Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.
These ideas were predictably intensely discussed on the Web and in
the media. While the internet has continued to grow, with online
activity and discourse only picking up both in positive and negative
ways in terms of blog interaction, the proposed Code has drawn more
widespread attention to the necessity of monitoring blogging activity
and social norms being as important online as offline.
See also
References
Blood, Rebecca (September 7, 2000). "Weblogs: A History And Perspective".
