Should We Fear the Blogosphere?

It’s a Blogs World

I have decided to do my last blog on blogs. Considering we studied blogs 3^rd week and we are now official bloggers, it feels appropriate.

Blogging first started with basic diary entries from Bruce Ableson in 1998. Others then joined and wrote their own journal entries whilst commenting on others journal entries. 5 million people have done this in “Open Diary” to this day. 9 years later David Karp brought us Tumblr.  Users are able to easily upload photos, text, images, video and conversation to the site for short, quick posts or lengthier ones. The site emphasizes its ease of use and encourages sharing by allowing users to "re-blog" posts they loved. With more than 6 million blogs, The New York Times (strangely) called it, "Facebook and Twitter's new rival."(Marcus, S, 2010).

It was surprising to discover that when Technorati, (the blogosphere ranking website), did a survey in 2009, it showed that 67% of bloggers were male. I assumed women would have an equal share, especially for the fact that”one of the most popular categories of blogs is the “mommy blog,” dishing out advice and empathy on raising children” (Cross, M, 2011, pg. 38). I believed this because I have always felt women are better communicators, especially from an emotional and personal stand point.  Technorati has Huffington Post as the most successful blog at number one. The Huffington Post was launched in 2005 as a liberal/left commentary outlet and alternative to news aggregators. The site offers news, blogs, and original content and covers politics, business, entertainment, environment, technology, popular media, lifestyle, culture, comedy, healthy living, women's interests and local news. It has come under some scrutiny over the years for its liberal and anti-republican views. I find it interesting that the website now wants to become an online newspaper. Will this mean it will go full circle and then become a fourth estate?

There are various legal things to consider when starting and writing a blog. Like any form of art or literature, the creator has a personal responsibility and social and legal obligation to act within certain boundaries. Some of the main legal issues are firstly Copyright - if you want to use copyright protected works on your blog, you must obtain the copyright owners permission if you cannot rely on a fair dealing exception. You do not necessarily need a written agreement with every contributor to your blog – verbal permission is fine. Moral Rights - A creator of a work has moral rights which recognise the creator's ongoing connection with the work. Moral rights entitle a creator to the right of attribution (naming), the right against false attribution and the right of integrity against derogatory treatment of the work in a way that prejudices the reputation or honour of the creator. Trade marks - a trade mark is a sign used in business to indicate that goods or services come from a particular trader or service provider. It can be a letter, name, signature, word, numeral, device, brand, heading, label, and aspect of packaging or shape, colour and even a scent or sound. A trade mark can consist of either words or images or a combination of both. There are two types of trademarks: registered trademarks and common law trademarks. Defamation - While you are venting your views on your blog you should consider whether what you are writing is defamatory. Defamation is a communication to at least one person that lowers the reputation of an identifiable third person, where the communicator has no legal defence.

More than 250 years ago a British writer called Henry Fielding introduced the idea of a fourth estate. This was the theory that writers could keep business, government and the social elite accountable for their actions. However the fourth estate has become owned by the social elite that in turn have strong ties to government and business. This is where bloggers and jBloggers can apply a fifth estate though ‘citizen journalism.’ But citizen journalism can share the same bias and hidden agendas that the fourth estate has too.

In Mary Cross’s book, Bloggerati, Twitterati: how blogs and twitter are transforming popular culture, she details how Blogs are more mainstream than any other media format. The new blogs that seem to be creeping up the Technorati charts are ones like TMZ, Gawker and Boing Boing. “The best way to get people to read your blog is to stir up some controversy, drawing in people from all sides of an argument, as Bill Wasik documents in his book, And Then There’s This.” (Cross, M, 2011, pg. 45). To me blogs give the general public a voice again. Our voices have been muffled over the years; even voters are finding it hard to trust their politicians and readers their local newspapers. Andrew Keen comes up with an interesting point when he says” What’s being blurred, he says, is the line “between fact and opinion, informed expertise and amateurish speculation.” Celebrating the amateur over the expert, online discussions are full of misinformation and rumour. Anonymity complicates the picture, and issues of ownership and copyright are rife” (Cross, M, pg. 50).

The technology that makes virtual communities possible has the potential to bring enormous leverage to ordinary citizens at relatively little cost--intellectual leverage, social leverage, commercial leverage, and most important, political leverage. But the technology will not in itself fulfil that potential; this latent technical power must be used intelligently and deliberately by an informed population. More people must learn about that leverage and learn to use it, while we still have the freedom to do so, if it is to live up to its potential. The odds are always good that big power and big money will find a way to control access to virtual communities; big power and big money always found ways to control new communications media when they emerged in the past. The Net is still out of control in fundamental ways, but it might not stay that way for long. What we know and do know is important because it is still possible for people around the world to make sure this new sphere of vital human discourse remains open to the citizens of the planet before the political and economic big boys seize it, censor it, meter it, and sell it back to us.

References

Cross, M. 2011. ‘Got Blog’ in Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter are Transforming Popular Culture, Greenwood Publishing Group, EBL eBook Library, viewed in March 2013

Legal Issues for Bloggers, viewed in March 2013, http://www.artslaw.com.au/info-sheets/info-sheet/legal-issues-for-bloggers/

Marcus, S, 2010, A Brief History of 9 Blogging Platforms, viewed in March 2013, http://mashable.com/2010/08/06/history-of-blogs/

The Virtual Community, viewed in March 2013, http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html

Images

1.  http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4S6buKKlhfQ/TOwEWQe6UwI/AAAAAAAAAEE/iuiMOhZfJYM/s1600/app_sphere_blogger.png
2. http://www.problogger.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/huffington-post-blogging.jpg

3. https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT87DYP6XeVGIpyOZa_GIRo-dMQ3lJn18LAVHz9ePRSwvB-WFhU
4. https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRAH2v5xpUmcyDkp39y5EMWzAMECj152SX50U3h7djZpQSrMjgdKw