The Blogging Revolution

Through the use of blogs, the Internet has enhanced ordinary citizens access to news and opinion, decentralizing the flow of information and challenging the role of mass media as sole arbiters of news. Besides, blogging is growing as a tool for promoting not only online engagement of citizens and public servants, but also offline engagement.


In the book "The Blogging Revolution", author Antony Loewenstein conducts a searching examination of the ways the internet is threatening the rule of some of the planet's most repressive governments, including in countries such as Iran, Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt. Loewenstein discovers the ways that Western multinationals are assisting the restriction of information in these countries, how bloggers are leading the charge for change of the web.


Through contacts made in the blogosphere, Loewenstein visits each of the six countries named above in turn, speaking to local bloggers and experts, in an attempt to reveal a richer, more detailed picture of living under one party rule.


However, Loewenstein catalogues the liberating features of the internet, such as the free access of information and perspectives not available from traditional media or the government. He notes, for example, the astounding statistic from the Committee to Protect Journalists that 40 per cent of journalists jailed around the world are web-based reporters.


Dissident bloggers in countries like Iran and China also have to contend with increasing internet censorship by the government, blocking websites dealing with undesirable content and excluding certain key words from search engines like Google. Yet it’s the complacency Loewenstein discovered that seems particularly frightening. Loewenstein says most of the people he spoke to were unbothered by the censorship, or unaware of just how many sites were being blocked. Whilst in the meantime the practise of censorship is speading.


According to Isaac Mao, the way the world will communicate and get its news can be found deep in the interconnected and viral blogosphere. While the entire world will change as blogging connects and informs people in new ways, the impact will particularly vivid in China before long. That’s because rather than attempting to reform or change existing media institutions, still largely state-controlled, bloggers simply go around the old media and find their audience a different way, he said. “collective intelligence on the click of creation,” Mao said.


Blogging is being used increasingly to speak out against oppression in authoritarian regimes and speak up amidst mainstream media.




Reference Lists:

1. Funnell, A 2007, The Blogging Revolution, Melbourne University Press, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2351985.htm
   
2. Wyld, D, C 2007, Blogging Revolution - Government in the Age of Web 2.0.