Blogs as Current Phenomenon & Benefits of Blogging to the Community

What’s the size of current blogosphere?

According to Technorati’s latest report - State of the Blogosphere 2010, the significant growth in number of weblog (English language) is continued. There is an increase from 50 million in 2006 until over 200 million blogs at the start of 2009 (Jim 2010).

Weblog Cumulative: March 2003 to March 2007

(Source: Sifry's Alerts)

However, these numbers change every day, when including non-English blogs in the total number, it is estimated over 1 billion blogs worldwide. This equates to 1 out of every 6 people in the world with a personal weblog (Jim 2010).

What’s the Trend in eg. Middle East, Asia & Malaysia?
In US, according to Technorati (2010), the two most popular social media - Twitter and Facebook still the first choice for most bloggers in their microblogging purposes compared to previous years. However, in 2010, the key trend is the significantly increasing in mobile blogging (tablets and smart phones).

What Types of Blogs are Prevalent in Certain Countries?

In Malaysia, there is a tight control toward press dissemination especially in the aspect of political issue. However, blogging has emerged as a main outlet for political expression by Malaysian citizens due to the prosperity of internet usage in recent years.

According to Ulicny (2011), recently, Malaysian bloggers have become more activate in confronting about the corruption issue within the national government. E.g. a significant event – 709 Bersih Rally is triggered mainly through blogosphere for the political purposes, i.e. Political Blogs.

What are the Benefits of those Prevalent Blogs (As Above) to the Community in Malaysia?

The prevalent of political blogging in Malaysia has created advantages to Malaysian community.

According to Gong (2009, p. 3), blogging is a significant factor which caused Barisan National (BN) lost its two-third majority in parliament in 2008 election.The enhanced opposition parties plus forces of blogging have contributed Malaysia entering into new era with new policy.

The new policy - deliberative democracy promised provides more rights to people in political freedom, dissents and criticism rather than only focuses on the elite deliberation as in old policy of consociational democracy (Azizuddin & Sani 2009).

References

Azizuddin, M & Sani, M 2009, ‘The Emergence of New Politics in Malaysia from Consociational to Deliberative Democracy’, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 97-125, <http://www.tfd.org.tw/docs/dj0502/097-126%20Mohd%20Azizuddin.pdf>.

Gong, R 2009, ‘Internet Politics and State Media Control: Candidate Weblogs in Malaysia’ in Political Effects of Blogs in Malaysia, Stanford University, pp. 1-25, <http://www.cprsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/drupal/Rachel%20Gong.pdf>.

Jim 2010, So How Many Blogs Are There, Anyway?, viewed 21 August 2011, <http://www.hattrickassociates.com/2010/02/how_many_blogs_2011_web_content/>.

Sobel, J 2010, State of the Blogosphere 2010 Introduction, viewed 21 August 2011, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/>.

Tan, CH 2011, Bersih 709, viewed 20 August 2011, <http://tanchiahui.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/bersih-709/>.

Ulicny, B 2011, ‘Modeling Malaysian Public Opinion by Mining the Malaysian Blogosphere’, VIStology, Inc. Framingham, MA, pp. 1-11, <http://vistology.com/papers/VIS-SBP08%20.pdf>.