Blogging

1
Blogging

• JOUR 4430
• Friday 16th November 2007

2
Content

• What is Blogging?
• DailyKos the Community-Blog
• Blogging at War

3
What is Blogging?

• by Sabina Ticevic

4
What is blogging?

• A publishing system for personal websites
• Publish your thoughts, meanings, pictures and
  reflections
• Considered as a public diary
• But also Blogs comment on news or political
  issues

5
What is blogging?

• A typical blog combines text, images and links to
  other blogs, media or texts related to the issue
  discussed in the blog.
• Blogging can be seen as
• 1) participatory journalism or
• 2) citizen journalism

6
The positive effects

• Enhances freedom of speech- anyone can create
  their own blog
• Citizens from suppressed regimes are given a
  chance to show the real side of the story
• Another point of view than the mainstream media

7
The problems

• Releasing confidential information
• Being biased
• Easily create hate-speech
• Can be used as a propaganda-tool
• Employees who reveal information and then loose
  their job
• Bloggers can be anonymous

8
DailyKos the Community-Blog

• by Alex Bräuer

9
What is a Community-Blog?

• A Community-Blog is
• a normal Blog with a FrontPage and a group of
  people who write Diaries, which will be posted in
  sequence.
• Everyone can be member and write diaries. You can
  see the headline of them in a list on the right
  side of the Homepage.
• You can click on the headline, read the hole
  entry and can comment on it. If you like the
  entry, you can recommend the diary.
• The diary with a lot of positive ratings has the
  opportunity to get on the Recommended-list, which
  is even more visible on the homepage.

• A Community-Blog is a special kind of
• blog, because everyone has the
• opportunity to be part of it in order to
• publicize his/her views.
• There are a couple of famous political
• Community-Blogs like Mydd, Booman
• Tribune, Calitics, Red State, European
• Tribune.

10
What is DailyKos?

• The most famous political Community
• Blog in the US, because of
• Around 500 000 visits per day
• Famous people from politics writing on Daily Kos
  like former President Jimmy Carter
• Visibility in the mass media. The founder of
  Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas Zùniga, was on nearly
  every political television show like NBC Meet
  the Press, MSNBC Countdown, and CNN Reliable
  Sources.

• This is a Democratic blog, a partisan
• blog. One that recognizes that
• Democrats run from the left to right on
• the ideological spectrum, and yet
• were all still in this fight together. ...
• Liberal? Yeah, were around here and
• were proud. But its not a liberal blog.
• Its a Democratic blog with one goal in
• mind electoral victory. And since we
• havent gotten any of that from the current
• crew, were one more thing a reform blog.
• The battle for the party is not an
• ideological battle. Its one between
• establishment and anti-establishment
• factions. And as Ive said a million times,
• the status quo is untenable.

11
Why is this important for freedom of expression?

• Every issue can be discussed by everyone in the
  public sphere of DailyKos.
• Politics and DailyKos Exchange beyond the two
  systems
• Globalizes public sphere through DailyKos

12
Is it really so good?

• Bill OReilly about DailyKos

13
Blogging at War

• by Judith Martin, Gisela Torrenti

14
Examples of blogging

• Example 1 Kevin Sites (http//kevinsites.net/2003
  _03_16_archive.html)
• This blog was written by a journalist from the
  NBC News.
• He was a freelance solo journalist on assignment
  for NBC News in Asia.
• He began to writte this blog as a personal
  website not affiliated with or funded by NBC
  News.
• This website acts like a parallel and independent
  source of information from the NBC News.

15
(No Transcript)
16
Example 1 Kevin Sites

• CNN politely asked him to stop blogging and
  they did immediately and completely because he
  felt it was his obligation to do so.
• Although he felt the blog was a separate and
  independent journalistic enterprise, they did
  not.
• For this reason, Kevin was forced to stop
  writting on his war blogging for a while.
• 7 months later, Sites came back to Iraq but this
  time on-assignment with MSNBC.

17
Example 1 Kevin Sites

• He continued writting his warblog because NBC
  agreed with it
• MSNBC has also agreed to allow me to continue
  with my PERSONAL and may I stress,
  NON-AFFILIATED weblog.
• - But there are some stipulations. The most
  important is that Sites has to send to NBC News
  the information before publish it in order to be
  revised by the channel.

18
Examples of blogging

• Example 2 Joshua Kucera
• Blog writed by a freelance journalist who has
  extensively covered Iraqi Kurdistan.
• He works for the news magazine Time.
• He only writes on his personal blog during 10
  days because as he said
• My editors have demanded that I stop posting to
  this site until the war ends. And they pay the
  bills, so what can I do. Thanks everyone for
  reading, and I hope to be back here soon.

19
Example 2 Joshua Kucera

• This is another example of the limitations on
  freedom of expression in the special case of
  blogging.
• Somehow to my more recent visitors I have
  become a symbol of the independent voice being
  stamped out by the corporate media. Joshua
  Kucera

20
Conclusion

• To sum up, we can say that the restrictions on
  Freedom of Expression are 6 blasphemy,
  obscenity, indecency offences, racial hatred,
  national security and criminal defamation.
• But on the other hand, we can say that in those
  cases the excesive liberty does not guarantee the
  periodistic rigor.
• These warblogs can turn on potentially
  compromising sources of information.