blog of influence

For the mainstream media--which almost by definition suffer a deficit of specialized, detailed knowledge--blogs can also serve as repositories of expertise. And for readers worldwide, blogs can act as the "man on the street," supplying unfiltered eyewitness accounts about foreign countries. This facet is an especially valuable service, given the decline in the number of foreign correspondents since the 1990s. Blogs may even provide expert analysis and summaries of foreign-language texts, such as newspaper articles and government studies, that reporters and pundits would not otherwise access or understand.

taken from http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5018020521

again again... blog versus mainstream media

The blogosphere also acts as a barometer for whether a story would or should receive greater coverage by the mainstream media. The more blogs that discuss a particular issue, the more likely that the blogosphere will set the agenda for future news coverage. Consider one recent example with regard to U.S. homeland security. In July 2004, Annie Jacobsen, a writer for WomensWallStreet.com, posted online a first-person account of suspicious activity by Syrian passengers on a domestic U.S. flight: "After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together, eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified," she wrote. Her account was quickly picked up, linked to, and vigorously debated throughout the blogosphere. Was this the preparation for another September 11-style terrorist attack? Was Jacobsen overreacting, allowing her judgment to be clouded by racial stereotypes? Should the U.S. government end the practice of fining "discriminatory" airlines that disproportionately search Arab passengers? In just one weekend, 2 million people read her article. Reports soon followed in mainstream media outlets such as NPR, MSNBC, Time, and the New York Times, prompting a broader national debate about the racial profiling of possible terrorists.

For starters, blogs can become an alternative source of news and commentary in countries where traditional media are under the thumb of the state. Blogs are more difficult to control than television or newspapers, especially under regimes that are tolerant of some degree of free expression. However, they are vulnerable to state censorship. A sufficiently determined government can stop blogs it doesn't like by restricting access to the Internet, or setting an example for others by punishing unauthorized political expression, as is currently the case in Saudi Arabia and China. The government may use filtering technologies to limit access to foreign blogs. And, if there isn't a reliable technological infrastructure, individuals will be shut out from the blogosphere. For instance, chronic power shortages and telecommunications problems make it difficult for Iraqis to write or read blogs.

Iran is a good example. The Iranian blogosphere has exploded. According to the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education's Blog Census, Farsi is the fourth most widely used language among blogs worldwide. One service provider alone ("Persian Blog") hosts some 60,000 active blogs. The weblogs allow young secular and religious Iranians to interact, partially taking the place of reformist newspapers that have been censored or shut down. Government efforts to impose filters on the Internet have been sporadic and only partially successful. Some reformist politicians have embraced blogs, including the president, who celebrated the number of Iranian bloggers at the World Summit on the Information Society, and Vice President Muhammad Ali Abtahi, who is a blogger himself. Elite Iranian blogs such as "Editor: Myself" have established links with the English-speaking blogosphere.

interseting facts here:

North Korea is perhaps the most blog-unfriendly nation. Only political elites and foreigners are allowed access to the Internet. As might be expected, there are no blogs within North Korea, nor any easy way for ordinary North Koreans to access foreign blogs. However, even in that country, blogs may have an impact. A former CNN journalist, Rebecca MacKinnon, has set up "NKZone," a blog that has rapidly become a focal point for North Korea news and discussion. As MacKinnon notes, this blog can aggregate information in a way that ordinary journalism cannot. North Korea rarely allows journalists to enter the country, and when it does, it assigns government minders to watch them constantly. However, non-journalists can and do enter the country. "NKZone" gathers information from a wide variety of sources, including tourists, diplomats, NGOs, and academics with direct experience of life in North Korea, and the blog organizes it for easy consumption. It has already been cited in such prominent publications as the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Sunday Times of London as a source for information about North Korea.


the last but not least *just the beggining for the long journey wakakaka

A lengthier treatment of the effect of blogs on politics can be found in the authors' paper "The Power and Politics of Blogs," presented at the 2004 American Political Science Association (APSA) annual meeting and available at APSA's Web site. For other studies of blog networks (all available online), see Clay Shirky's "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality," the Perseus Development Corporation's "Blogging Iceberg," and Eytan Adar, Li Zhang, Lada A. Adamic, and Rajan M. Lukose's "Implicit Structure and the Dynamics of Blogspace," presented at the 13th International World Wide Web Conference, May 18, 2004.

For general primers on weblogs as a medium, Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog (Cambridge: Persues, 2002) is a good first start, and Dan Gillmor's We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media Inc., 2004) is a good place to finish. Rebecca MacKinnon's essay "The World-Wide Conversation: Online Participatory Media and International News," available on the Web site of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, offers interesting insights about blogs as international information aggregators. Several Web sites, including Technorati, TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem, and Blogstreet, are devoted to tracking and rankings blogs.

More broadly, there is significant debate about the Internet's effect on world politics. Ronald J. Deibert agrues that the Internet enhances the influence of global civil society in "International Plug 'n Play? Citizen Activism, the Internet, and Global Public Policy" (International Studies Perspectives, July 2000). Drezner addresses the limits of the Internet in "The Global Governance of the Internet: Bringing the State Black In" (Political Science Quarterly, Fall 2004). Shanti Kalathil examines the impact of the Internet on authoritarian societies in "Dot Com for Dictators" (FOREIGN POLICY, March/April 2003).

:)
bye