Abstract
To assess some of the ways that blogs appear to be affecting news reporting and consumption as well as some giving a sense as to their implications for social stability, this paper presents a preliminary analysis of views and comments by bloggers in Asian countries. Data on this topic was gathered by e-mail interviews of Asian bloggers as well as by collecting writings and data from relevant websites. Analysis suggests that, in many societies in Asia and elsewhere, bloggers have become an important source of news outside of but also alongside of traditional mainstream media. A trend is observed that information and communication technologies are reconfiguring the traditional balance between the creators and consumers of news and the journalistic reporting profession. Internet blogs and mobile phones, among other technologies, have made new information and perspectives available concerning local events; they have also added important and often oppositional interpretations of the significance and meaning of those events. Thus, on both professional and economic grounds, the New Media are reducing the relative prominence of traditional news outlets as well as stature of professional journalists.
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Notes
Conclusions were drawn from a two-phase study titled “Tracking and Analyzing Community News Models.” In this study, 64 citizen journalism websites in 15 metropolitan areas of US were investigated, and it was found that blogs are less open in terms of allowing posts by visitors. Details about the study are available at http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/2008/CitizenMedia.pdf
In 2005, a blogger was tried in Tehran for “insulting the prophets” in his postings. The penalty if convicted could have been execution, but the blogger was acquitted (Reporters Without Borders 2008).
A group of netizens notified each other through SMS to organize a protest called “Flash Mob” at the City Hall subway station to support Lee Kin Mun. See http://akikonomu.blogspot.com/2006/07/flash-mob-for-mr-brown.html. Meanwhile, after the government issued the response letter, a great number of people swarmed to Lee’s blog to voice their support of him. See http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2006/07/letter_from_mic.html
Reporters Without Border criticized the reactions from the Singapore government by all means repressed the freedom speech supposedly afforded to the bloggers and journalists. See http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=18208
As part of the activity of Pesta Blogger 2008, a national-scale blogger gathering event in Indonesia, the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Indonesia invited foreign bloggers (from United States, China/Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia) to Yogyakarta and Bali, Indonesia. The purpose of arranging these trips is for these invited bloggers to share about their experiences and impressions of these areas with a wider scope of audiences. See http://pestablogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/pb-release-eng.pdf
See http://nilatanzil.blogspot.com/2007/10/27th-october-is-national-blogers-day.html and http://pestablogger.com/(blogger party 2007).
See US Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100515.htm.
This phone survey, conducted from November 20 through 30, 2007, was based on a random sample of 1,862 respondents. The study was conducted in two steps; first a survey and then in-depth interviews with 486 bloggers.
The survey asked respondents to indicate whether they had “more,” “less,” or “the same” trust in blog posts as compared to online news. The report is available in Chinese at http//www.cnnic.cn/html/Dir/2007/12/26/4948.htm.
See OpenNet Institute’s report at http://opennet.net/research/profiles/china and US Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2007, available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100518.htm.
Reporters Without Borders’s 2007 annual report, available at http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=20795.
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Note: This paper is a revision of a talk prepared for the Hong Kong Polytechnic University international conference on The Role of New Technologies in Global Societies, July 30–31, 2008.
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Katz, J.E., Lai, CH. News Blogging in Cross-Cultural Contexts: A Report on the Struggle for Voice. Know Techn Pol 22, 95–107 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12130-009-9072-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12130-009-9072-1