Blogs As Current Phenomenon & Benefits to the Community

Ever since 2004, Technorati has been supplying information and statistics in regards to the blogosphere. In relation, Technorati stated on its website that the annual study is done by following growth and trends in the blogosphere. The final statistics are dissected into different parts and depicted as pie charts, and that delineates how Technorati views the importance of saliency as an imperative.

A blog is basically an online journal whereby you can digitally pen down your thoughts, ideas, opinions and practically anything else that you want people to read about. Based on Pew Internet(2006) 76% of the bloggers solely wanted a medium to share their personal experiences, whereas only 11% of the bloggers ran a politically inclined blog. In contrast, blogs about politics and the government are more prevalent in Asian countries, most notably Malaysia.

According to The Star(2008), Malaysia has about 500,000 active bloggers, ranking the country among the highest in the world after Indonesia and the European Union. It is also said that 70% of the election results were influenced by information on the blogs (The Star,2008). It is understood that Malaysia is a country whereby information given by the local media are filtered thoroughly and closely monitored. Besides that, circulation of newspapers and dailies are tightly distributed by the government and political parties, and this pits Malaysia in a sitution whereby the only way of disseminating unbiased views are via weblogs. This way, readers are able to acknowledge the distict difference of two seperate mediums. This has been proven by the researchers from University Kebangsaan Malaysia (2010) that the freedom of voicing out political thoughts in cyber space was used extensively by bloggers to channel political information that are not found in the mainstream media.

References

1) Nasir, AG 2010, Malaysian bloggers use cyber space to channel political information, University Kebangsaan Malaysia News Portal, viewed 24 August 2011,

2) Blogging in Malaysia ranks among the highest in the world 2008, The Star Online, Viewed 24 August 2011,

3) Technorati: State of the Blogosphere,viewed 24 August 2011,

4) Blogging is bringing new voices to the online world 2006, Pew Internet, viewed 24 August 2011,