Gopher Proxy
gopherpedia.com:70 gopherpedia.com:70/0//blog
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
======================================================================
= blog =
======================================================================
Introduction
======================================================================
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a website whose basic unit is a
"post" or "entry", with posts typically presented in reverse
chronological order. Blogging may be carried out by individuals,
commercial enterprises, or organizations, and blog content varies
widely.
In the 2000s, blogs were often the work of a single individual,
occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or
topic. In the 2010s, multi-author blogs (MABs) emerged, featuring the
writing of multiple authors, sometimes professionally edited. MABs
from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks,
advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing
quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other
"microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs
into the news media. 'Blog' can also be used as a verb, meaning 'to
maintain or add content to a blog'.
The emergence and growth of blogs in the late 1990s coincided with the
advent of web publishing tools that facilitated the posting of content
by non-technical users who did not have much experience with HTML or
computer programming. Previously, knowledge of such technologies as
HTML and File Transfer Protocol had been required to publish content
on the Web, and early Web users therefore tended to be hackers and
computer enthusiasts.
As of the 2010s, the majority are interactive Web 2.0 websites,
allowing visitors to leave online comments, and it is this
interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites. In
that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of social networking
service. Indeed, bloggers not only produce content to post on their
blogs but also often build social relations with their readers and
other bloggers. Blog owners or authors often moderate and filter
online comments to remove hate speech or other offensive content.
There are also high-readership blogs which do not allow comments.
Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject or topic,
ranging from philosophy, religion, and arts to science, politics, and
sports. Others function as more personal online diaries or online
brand advertising of a particular individual or company. A typical
blog combines text, digital images, and links to other blogs, web
pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily
textual, although some focus on art ('art blogs'), photographs
('photoblogs'), videos ('video blogs' or 'vlogs'), music ('MP3
blogs'), and audio ('podcasts'). In education, blogs can be used as
instructional resources; these are referred to as 'edublogs'.
Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.
'Blog' and 'blogging' are now loosely used for content creation and
sharing on social media, especially when the content is long-form and
one creates and shares content on a regular basis, so one could be
maintaining a blog on Facebook or blogging on Instagram. A 2022
estimate suggested that there were over 600 million public blogs out
of more than 1.9 billion websites.
History
======================================================================
The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on December 17, 1997. The
short form "blog" was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the
word 'weblog' into the phrase 'we blog' in the sidebar of his blog
Peterme.com in May 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra
Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb and devised the term
"blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to
the popularization of the terms.
Origins
=========
Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms,
including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, Byte
Information Exchange (BIX) and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists, and
bulletin board systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software
created running conversations with "threads". Threads are topical
connections between messages on a virtual "corkboard".
Tim Berners-Lee created what is considered by Encyclopedia Britannica
to be "the first 'blog in 1992 to discuss the progress made on
creating the World Wide Web and software used for it.
From June 14, 1993, Mosaic Communications Corporation maintained their
"What's New" list of new websites, updated daily and archived monthly.
The page was accessible by a special "What's New" button in the Mosaic
web browser.
In November 1993 Ranjit Bhatnagar started writing about interesting
sites, pages and discussion groups he found on the internet, as well
as some personal information, on his website Moonmilk, arranging them
chronologically in a special section called Ranjit's HTTP Playground.
Other early pioneers of blogging, such as Justin Hall, credit him with
being an inspiration.
The earliest instance of a commercial blog was on the first business
to consumer Web site created in 1995 by Ty, Inc., which featured a
blog in a section called "Online Diary". The entries were maintained
by featured Beanie Babies that were voted for monthly by Web site
visitors.
The modern blog evolved from the online diary where people would keep
a running account of the events in their personal lives. Most such
writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. Justin
Hall, who began personal blogging in 1994 while a student at
Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earlier
bloggers, as is Jerry Pournelle. Dave Winer's Scripting News is also
credited with being one of the older and longer running weblogs.
The Australian Netguide magazine maintained the Daily Net News on
their web site from 1996. Daily Net News ran links and daily reviews
of new websites, mostly in Australia.
Another early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared
diary of a person's personal life combining text, digital video, and
digital pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap
device to a web site in 1994. This practice of semi-automated blogging
with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance,
and such journals were also used as evidence in legal matters. Some
early bloggers, such as The Misanthropic Bitch, who began in 1997,
referred to their online presence as a zine, before the term blog
entered common usage.
The first research paper about blogging was Torill Mortensen and Jill
Walker Rettberg's paper "Blogging Thoughts", which analysed how blogs
were being used to foster research communities and the exchange of
ideas and scholarship, and how this new means of networking overturns
traditional power structures.
Technology
============
Early blogs were simply manually updated components of common
websites. In 1995, the "Online Diary" on the Ty, Inc. website was
produced and updated manually before any blogging programs were
available. Posts were made to appear in reverse chronological order by
manually updating text-based HTML code using FTP software in real time
several times a day. To users, this offered the appearance of a live
diary that contained multiple new entries per day. At the beginning of
each new day, new diary entries were manually coded into a new HTML
file, and at the start of each month, diary entries were archived into
their own folder, which contained a separate HTML page for every day
of the month. Then, menus that contained links to the most recent
diary entry were updated manually throughout the site. This text-based
method of organizing thousands of files served as a springboard to
define future blogging styles that were captured by blogging software
developed years later.
The evolution of electronic and software tools to facilitate the
production and maintenance of Web articles posted in reverse
chronological order made the publishing process feasible for a much
larger and less technically inclined population. Ultimately, this
resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces
blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of
browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". Blogs
can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, on regular web
hosting services, or run using blog software.
Rise in popularity
====================
After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage
spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized
by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:
* Bruce Ableson launched Open Diary in October 1998, which soon grew
to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader
comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add
comments to other writers' blog entries.
* Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal in March 1999.
* Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in July 1999 as an easier
alternative to maintaining a "news page" on a Web site, followed by
DiaryLand in September 1999, focusing more on a personal diary
community.
* Blogger (blogspot.com) was launched in 1999
Political impact
==================
An early milestone in the rise in importance of blogs came in 2002,
when many bloggers focused on comments by U.S. Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott. Senator Lott, at a party honoring U.S. Senator Strom
Thurmond, praised Senator Thurmond by suggesting that the United
States would have been better off had Thurmond been elected president.
Lott's critics saw these comments as tacit approval of racial
segregation, a policy advocated by Thurmond's 1948 presidential
campaign. This view was reinforced by documents and recorded
interviews dug up by bloggers (see Josh Marshall's 'Talking Points
Memo'). Though Lott's comments were made at a public event attended by
the media, no major media organizations reported on his controversial
comments until after blogs broke the story. Blogging helped to create
a political crisis that forced Lott to step down as majority leader.
Similarly, blogs were among the driving forces behind the "Rathergate"
scandal. Television journalist Dan Rather presented documents on the
CBS show '60 Minutes' that conflicted with accepted accounts of
President Bush's military service record. Bloggers declared the
documents to be forgeries and presented evidence and arguments in
support of that view. Consequently, CBS apologized for what it said
were inadequate reporting techniques (see: Little Green Footballs).
The impact of these stories gave greater credibility to blogs as a
medium of news dissemination.
In Russia, some political bloggers have started to challenge the
dominance of official, overwhelmingly pro-government media. Bloggers
such as Rustem Adagamov and Alexei Navalny have many followers, and
the latter's nickname for the ruling United Russia party as the "party
of crooks and thieves" has been adopted by anti-regime protesters.
This led to 'The Wall Street Journal' calling Navalny "the man
Vladimir Putin fears most" in March 2012. (Navalny died in prison in
2024.)
Mainstream popularity
=======================
By 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as
political consultants, news services, and candidates began using them
as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Blogging was established by
politicians and political candidates to express opinions on war and
other issues and cemented blogs' role as a news source. (See Howard
Dean and Wesley Clark.) Even politicians not actively campaigning,
such as the UK's Labour Party's Member of Parliament (MP) Tom Watson,
began to blog to bond with constituents. In January 2005, 'Fortune'
magazine listed eight bloggers whom business people "could not
ignore": Peter Rojas, Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott, Jonathan
Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis.
Israel was among the first national governments to set up an official
blog. Under David Saranga, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
became active in adopting Web 2.0 initiatives, including an official
video blog and a political blog. The Foreign Ministry also held a
microblogging press conference via Twitter about its war with Hamas,
with Saranga answering questions from the public in common
text-messaging abbreviations during a live worldwide press conference.
The questions and answers were later posted on IsraelPolitik, the
country's official political blog.
The impact of blogging on the mainstream media has also been
acknowledged by governments. In 2009, the presence of the American
journalism industry had declined to the point that several newspaper
corporations were filing for bankruptcy, resulting in less direct
competition between newspapers within the same circulation area.
Discussion emerged as to whether the newspaper industry would benefit
from a stimulus package by the federal government. U.S. President
Barack Obama acknowledged the emerging influence of blogging upon
society by saying, "if the direction of the news is all blogosphere,
all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to
put stories in context, then what you will end up getting is people
shouting at each other across the void, but not a lot of mutual
understanding". Between 2009 and 2012, an Orwell Prize for blogging
was awarded.
By the late 2000s, blogs were often used on business websites and for
grassroots political activism.
Types
======================================================================
There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the
type of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or
written.
;Personal blogs: The personal blog is an ongoing online diary or
commentary written by an individual, rather than a corporation or
organization. While the vast majority of personal blogs attract very
few readers, other than the blogger's immediate family and friends, a
small number of personal blogs have become popular, to the point that
they have attracted lucrative advertising sponsorship. A few personal
bloggers have gained significant recognition beyond their immediate
circles.
;Collaborative blogs or group blogs: A type of weblog in which posts
are written and published by more than one author. The majority of
high-profile collaborative blogs are organised according to a single
uniting theme, such as politics, technology or advocacy. In recent
years, the blogosphere has seen the emergence and growing popularity
of more collaborative efforts, often set up by already established
bloggers wishing to pool time and resources, both to reduce the
pressure of maintaining a popular website and to attract a larger
readership.
;Microblogging: Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces
of digital content--which could be text, pictures, links, short
videos, or other media--on the internet. Microblogging offers a
portable communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many
users. It has captured the public imagination, in part because the
short posts are easy to read on the go or when waiting. Friends use it
to keep in touch, business associates use it to coordinate meetings or
share useful resources, and celebrities and politicians (or their
publicists) microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or
tour schedules. A wide and growing range of add-on tools enables
sophisticated updates and interaction with other applications. The
resulting profusion of functionality is helping to define new
possibilities for this type of communication. Examples of these
include Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and, by far the largest, Weibo.
;Corporate and organizational blogs: A blog can be private, as in most
cases, or it can be for business or not-for-profit organization or
government purposes. Blogs used internally and only available to
employees via an Intranet are called corporate blogs. Companies use
internal corporate blogs to enhance the communication, culture and
employee engagement in a corporation. Internal corporate blogs can be
used to communicate news about company policies or procedures, build
employee esprit de corps and improve morale. Companies and other
organizations also use external, publicly accessible blogs for
marketing, branding, or public relations purposes. Some organizations
have a blog authored by their executive; in practice, many of these
executive blog posts are penned by a ghostwriter who makes posts in
the style of the credited author. Similar blogs for clubs and
societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by similar names;
typical use is to inform members and other interested parties of club
and member activities.
;Aggregated blogs: Individuals or organization may aggregate selected
feeds on a specific topic, product or service and provide a combined
view for its readers. This allows readers to concentrate on reading
instead of searching for quality on-topic content and managing
subscriptions. Many such aggregations are called planets, from the
name of Planet (software) that performs such aggregation; hosting
sites usually have the 'planet.' subdomain in the domain name (like
http://planet.gnome.org/).
;By genre: Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political
blogs, journalism blogs, health blogs, travel blogs (also known as
'travelogs'), gardening blogs, house blogs, Book Blogs, fashion blogs,
beauty blogs, lifestyle blogs, party blogs, wedding blogs, photography
blogs, project blogs, psychology blogs, sociology blogs, education
blogs, niche blogs, classical music blogs, quizzing blogs, legal blogs
(often referred to as a blawgs), or dreamlogs. How-to/Tutorial blogs
are becoming increasing popular. Two common types of genre blogs are
art blogs and music blogs. A blog featuring discussions, especially
about home and family is not uncommonly called a mom blog. While not a
legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is
known as a splog.
;By media type: A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one
comprising links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of
sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a
photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called
tumblelogs. Blogs that are written on typewriters and then scanned are
called typecast or typecast blogs. A rare type of blog hosted on the
Gopher Protocol is known as a phlog.
;By device: A blog can also be defined by which type of device is used
to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone
or PDA could be called a moblog.
;Reverse blog: A reverse blog is composed by its users rather than a
single blogger. This system has the characteristics of a blog and the
writing of several authors. These can be written by several
contributing authors on a topic or opened up for anyone to write.
There is typically some limit to the number of entries to keep it from
operating like a web forum.
Community and cataloging
======================================================================
;Blogosphere: The collective community of all blogs and blog authors,
particularly notable and widely read blogs, is known as the
'blogosphere'. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they
may be seen as interconnected and socially networked, through
blogrolls, comments, linkbacks (refbacks, trackbacks or pingbacks),
and backlinks. Discussions "in the blogosphere" were occasionally used
by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues. Because
new, untapped communities of bloggers and their readers can emerge in
the space of a few years, Internet marketers pay close attention to
"trends in the blogosphere".See for instance:
*
;Blog search engines: Several blog search engines have been used to
search blog contents, such as Bloglines (defunct), BlogScope
(defunct), and Technorati (defunct).
;Blogging communities and directories: Several online communities
exist that connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers.
Interest-specific blogging platforms are also available. For instance,
Blogster has a sizable community of political bloggers among its
members. Global Voices aggregates international bloggers, "with
emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international
mainstream media."
;Blogging and advertising: It is common for blogs to feature banner
advertisements or promotional content, either to financially benefit
the blogger, support website hosting costs, or to promote the
blogger's favourite causes or products. The popularity of blogs has
also given rise to "fake blogs" in which a company will create a
fictional blog as a marketing tool to promote a product.
As the popularity of blogging continued to rise (as of 2006), the
commercialisation of blogging is rapidly increasing. Many corporations
and companies collaborate with bloggers to increase advertising and
engage online communities with their products. In the book 'Fans,
Bloggers, and Gamers', Henry Jenkins stated that "Bloggers take
knowledge into their own hands, enabling successful navigation within
and between these emerging knowledge cultures. One can see such
behaviour as co-optation into commodity culture insofar as it
sometimes collaborates with corporate interests, but one can also see
it as increasing the diversity of media culture, providing
opportunities for greater inclusiveness, and making more responsive to
consumers."
Early popularity
======================================================================
*Before 2006: The blogdex project was launched by researchers in the
MIT Media Lab to crawl the Web and gather data from thousands of blogs
to investigate their social properties. Information was gathered by
the tool for over four years, during which it autonomously tracked the
most contagious information spreading in the blog community, ranking
it by recency and popularity. It can, therefore, be considered the
first instantiation of a memetracker. The project was replaced by
tailrank.com, which in turn has been replaced by spinn3r.com.
*2006: Blogs are given rankings by Alexa Internet (web hits of Alexa
Toolbar users), and formerly by blog search engine Technorati based on
the number of incoming links (Technorati stopped doing this in 2014).
In August 2006, Technorati found that the most linked-to blog on the
internet was that of Chinese actress Xu Jinglei. Chinese media Xinhua
reported that this blog received more than 50 million page views,
claiming it to be the most popular blog in the world at the time.
Technorati rated Boing Boing to be the most-read group-written blog.
*2008: , blogging had "become such a mania that a new blog was created
every second of every minute of every hour of every day." Researchers
have actively analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become popular. There
are essentially two measures of this: popularity through citations, as
well as popularity through affiliation (i.e., blogroll). The basic
conclusion from studies of the structure of blogs is that while it
takes time for a blog to become popular through blogrolls, permalinks
can boost popularity more quickly and are perhaps more indicative of
popularity and authority than blogrolls since they denote that people
are reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or noteworthy in
specific cases.
Software
======================================================================
Since blogs are a type of website, they can be created using the same
software used to build websites. Many people use managed platforms
such as Medium (website) or Substack. These platforms have built-in
support for many features such as previewing posts, paywalls, and
newsletters. Other people self-host their website via open source
software such as WordPress or static site generators such as Hugo
(software) or Jekyll (software).
Modern blog hosting platforms often support a wider range of website
types beyond traditional blogs. WordPress.com, for instance, is a
managed hosting platform built on the open-source WordPress software
that supports blogs alongside different types of business websites.
Such blogging platforms typically require users to create an account
before publishing content.
Blurring with the mass media
======================================================================
Many bloggers, particularly those engaged in participatory journalism,
are amateur journalists, and thus they differentiate themselves from
the professional reporters and editors who work in mainstream media
organizations. Other bloggers are media professionals who are
publishing online, rather than via a TV station or newspaper, either
as an add-on to a traditional media presence (e.g., hosting a radio
show or writing a column in a paper newspaper), or as their sole
journalistic output. Some institutions and organizations see blogging
as a means of "getting around the filter" of media "gatekeepers" and
pushing their messages directly to the public. Many mainstream
journalists, meanwhile, write their own blogs--well over 300,
according to CyberJournalist.net's J-blog list. The first known use of
a blog on a news site was in August 1998, when Jonathan Dube of 'The
Charlotte Observer' published one chronicling Hurricane Bonnie.
Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers
(and others) have appeared on radio and television: Duncan Black
(known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios), Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit),
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Daily Kos), Alex Steffen (Worldchanging), Ana
Marie Cox (Wonkette), Nate Silver (FiveThirtyEight.com), and Ezra
Klein (Ezra Klein blog in 'The American Prospect,' now in 'The
Washington Post'). In counterpoint, Hugh Hewitt exemplifies a mass
media personality who has moved in the other direction, adding to his
reach in "old media" by being an influential blogger. Similarly, it
was 'Emergency Preparedness and Safety Tips On Air and Online' blog
articles that captured Surgeon General of the United States Richard
Carmona's attention and earned his kudos for the associated broadcasts
by talk show host Lisa Tolliver and Westchester Emergency Volunteer
Reserves-Medical Reserve Corps Director Marianne Partridge.
Blogs have also had an influence on minority languages, bringing
together scattered speakers and learners; this is particularly so with
blogs in Gaelic languages. Minority language publishing (which may
lack economic feasibility) can find its audience through inexpensive
blogging. There are examples of bloggers who have published books
based on their blogs, e.g., Salam Pax, Ellen Simonetti, Jessica
Cutler, and ScrappleFace. Blog-based books have been given the name
blook. A prize for the best blog-based book was initiated in 2005, the
Lulu Blooker Prize. However, success has been elusive offline, with
many of these books not selling as well as their blogs. The book based
on Julie Powell's blog "The Julie/Julia Project" was made into the
film 'Julie & Julia', apparently the first to do so.
Consumer-generated advertising
======================================================================
Consumer-generated advertising is a relatively new and controversial
development, and it has created a new model of marketing communication
from businesses to consumers. Among the various forms of advertising
on blog, the most controversial are the sponsored posts. These are
blog entries or posts and may be in the form of feedback, reviews,
opinion, videos, etc. and usually contain a link back to the desired
site using a keyword or several keywords. Blogs have led to some
disintermediation and a breakdown of the traditional advertising
model, where companies can skip over the advertising agencies
(previously the only interface with the customer) and contact the
customers directly via social media websites. On the other hand, new
companies specialised in blog advertising have been established to
take advantage of this new development as well. However, there are
many people who look negatively on this new development. Some believe
that any form of commercial activity on blogs will destroy the
blogosphere's credibility.
Legal and social consequences
======================================================================
Blogging can result in a range of legal liabilities and other
unforeseen consequences.
Defamation or liability
=========================
Several cases have been brought before the national courts against
bloggers concerning issues of defamation or liability. U.S. payouts
related to blogging totalled $17.4 million by 2009; in some cases
these have been covered by umbrella insurance. The courts have
returned with mixed verdicts. Internet service providers (ISPs), in
general, are immune from liability for information that originates
with third parties (U.S. Communications Decency Act and the EU
Directive 2000/31/EC). In 'Doe v. Cahill', the Delaware Supreme Court
held that stringent standards had to be met to unmask the anonymous
bloggers and also took the unusual step of dismissing the libel case
itself (as unfounded under American libel law) rather than referring
it back to the trial court for reconsideration. In a bizarre twist,
the Cahills were able to obtain the identity of John Doe, who turned
out to be the person they suspected: the town's mayor, Councilman
Cahill's political rival. The Cahills amended their original
complaint, and the mayor settled the case rather than going to trial.
In January 2007, two prominent Malaysian political bloggers, Jeff Ooi
and Ahirudin Attan, were sued by a pro-government newspaper, The New
Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad, Kalimullah bin Masheerul
Hassan, Hishamuddin bin Aun and Brenden John a/l John Pereira over
alleged defamation. The plaintiff was supported by the Malaysian
government. Following the suit, the Malaysian government proposed to
"register" all bloggers in Malaysia to better control parties against
their interests. This is the first such legal case against bloggers in
the country. In the United States, blogger Aaron Wall was sued by
Traffic Power for defamation and publication of trade secrets in 2005.
According to 'Wired' magazine, Traffic Power had been "banned from
Google for allegedly rigging search engine results." Wall and other
"white hat" search engine optimization consultants had exposed Traffic
Power in what they claim was an effort to protect the public. The case
was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, and Traffic Power
failed to appeal within the allowed time.
In 2009, NDTV issued a legal notice to Indian blogger Kunte for a blog
post criticizing their coverage of the Mumbai attacks. The blogger
unconditionally withdrew his post, which resulted in several Indian
bloggers criticizing NDTV for trying to silence critics.
Employment
============
Employees who blog about elements of their place of employment can
begin to affect the reputation of their employer, either in a positive
way, if the employee is praising the employer and its workplaces, or
in a negative way, if the blogger is making negative comments about
the company or its practices.
In general, attempts by employee bloggers to protect themselves by
maintaining anonymity have proved ineffective. In 2009, a
controversial and landmark decision by The Hon. Mr Justice Eady
refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of Richard Horton.
Horton was a police officer in the United Kingdom who blogged about
his job under the name "NightJack".
Delta Air Lines fired flight attendant Ellen Simonetti because she
posted photographs of herself in uniform on an aeroplane and because
of comments posted on her blog "Queen of Sky: Diary of a Flight
Attendant" which the employer deemed inappropriate. This case
highlighted the issue of personal blogging and freedom of expression
versus employer rights and responsibilities, and so it received wide
media attention. Simonetti took legal action against the airline for
"wrongful termination, defamation of character and lost future wages".
The suit was postponed while Delta was in bankruptcy proceedings.
In early 2006, Erik Ringmar, a senior lecturer at the London School of
Economics, was ordered by the convenor of his department to "take down
and destroy" his blog in which he discussed the quality of education
at the school.
Mark Jen was terminated in 2005 after 10 days of employment as an
assistant product manager at Google for discussing corporate secrets
on his personal blog, then called 99zeros and hosted on the
Google-owned Blogger service. He blogged about unreleased products and
company finances a week before the company's earnings announcement. He
was fired two days after he complied with his employer's request to
remove the sensitive material from his blog.
In India, blogger Gaurav Sabnis resigned from IBM after his posts
questioned the claims made by a management school. Jessica Cutler, aka
"The Washingtonienne", blogged about her sex life while employed as a
congressional assistant. After the blog was discovered and she was
fired,
she wrote a novel based on her experiences and blog: 'The
Washingtonienne: A Novel'. , Cutler is being sued by one of her former
lovers in a case that could establish the extent to which bloggers are
obligated to protect the privacy of their real life associates.
Catherine Sanderson, a.k.a. Petite Anglaise, lost her job in Paris at
a British accountancy firm because of blogging. Although given in the
blog in a fairly anonymous manner, some of the descriptions of the
firm and some of its people were less than flattering. Sanderson later
won a compensation claim case against the British firm, however.
On the other hand, Penelope Trunk wrote an upbeat article in 'The
Boston Globe' in 2006, entitled "Blogs 'essential' to a good career".
She was one of the first journalists to point out that a large portion
of bloggers are professionals and that a well-written blog can help
attract employers.
Business owners
=================
Business owners who blog about their business can also run into legal
consequences. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was fined
during the 2006 NBA playoffs for criticizing NBA officials on the
court and in his blog.
Political dangers
===================
Blogging can sometimes have unforeseen consequences in politically
sensitive areas. In some countries, Internet police or secret police
may monitor blogs and arrest blog authors or commentators. Blogs can
be much harder to control than broadcast or print media because a
person can create a blog whose authorship is hard to trace by using
anonymity technology such as Tor. As a result, totalitarian and
authoritarian regimes often seek to suppress blogs and punish those
who maintain them.
In Singapore, two ethnic Chinese individuals were imprisoned under the
country's anti-sedition law for posting anti-Muslim remarks in their
blogs. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer was charged with insulting the
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and an Islamic institution through
his blog. It is the first time in the history of Egypt that a blogger
was prosecuted. After a brief trial session that took place in
Alexandria, the blogger was found guilty and sentenced to prison terms
of three years for insulting Islam and inciting sedition and one year
for insulting Mubarak. Egyptian blogger Abdel Monem Mahmoud was
arrested in April 2007 for anti-government writings in his blog. Monem
is a member of the then banned Muslim Brotherhood. After the 2011
Egyptian revolution, the Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad was
charged with insulting the military for an article he wrote on his
personal blog and sentenced to three years.
After expressing opinions in his personal blog about the state of the
Sudanese armed forces, Jan Pronk, United Nations Special
Representative for Sudan, was given three days notice to leave Sudan.
The Sudanese army had demanded his deportation. In Myanmar, Nay Phone
Latt, a blogger, was sentenced to 20 years in jail for posting a
cartoon critical of head of state Than Shwe.
Personal safety
=================
One consequence of blogging is the possibility of online or in-person
attacks or threats against the blogger, sometimes without apparent
reason. In some cases, bloggers have faced cyberbullying. Kathy
Sierra, author of the blog "Creating Passionate Users", was the target
of threats and misogynistic insults to the point that she cancelled
her keynote speech at a technology conference in San Diego, fearing
for her safety. While a blogger's anonymity is often tenuous, Internet
trolls who would attack a blogger with threats or insults can be
emboldened by the anonymity of the online environment, where some
users are known only by a pseudonymous "username" (e.g.,
"Hacker1984"). Sierra and supporters initiated an online discussion
aimed at countering abusive online behaviour and developed a Blogger's
Code of Conduct, which set out a rules for behaviour in the online
space.
See also
======================================================================
* Blog award
* BROG
* Chat room
* Citizen journalism
* Collaborative blog
* Comparison of free blog hosting services
* Customer engagement
* Glossary of blogging
* Interactive journalism
* Internet think tank
* Israblog
* List of blogs
* List of family-and-homemaking blogs
* Mass collaboration
* Perzine
* Sideblog
* Social blogging
* Think aloud protocol
* Webmaster
* Web template system
* Web traffic
Further reading
======================================================================
* Alavi, Nasrin. 'We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs', Soft Skull Press,
New York, 2005. .
* Bruns, Axel, and Joanne Jacobs, eds. 'Uses of Blogs', Peter Lang,
New York, 2006. .
* Blood, Rebecca.
[http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html "Weblogs: A
History and Perspective"] . "Rebecca's Pocket".
*
* Kline, David; Burstein, Dan. 'Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution
is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture', Squibnocket Partners,
L.L.C., 2005. .
* Gorman, Michael.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150407161907/http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2005/02/ljarchives/backtalk-revenge-of-the-blog-people/
"Revenge of the Blog People!"]. 'Library Journal'.
*Heriot, Gail,
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=898176 Are Modern
Bloggers Following in the Footsteps of Publius (and Other Musings on
Blogging by Legal Scholars...)], 8 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1113 (2006).
* Ringmar, Erik.
[https://archive.org/download/ABloggersManifestoFreeSpeechAndCensorshipInTheAgeOfTheInternet/ErikRingmarABloggersManifesto.pdf
A Blogger's Manifesto: Free Speech and Censorship in the Age of the
Internet] (London: Anthem Press, 2007).
* Rosenberg, Scott,
[https://archive.org/details/sayeverythinghow00rose 'Say Everything:
how blogging Began, what it's becoming, and why it matters'], New York
: Crown Publishers, 2009.
*
External links
======================================================================
* [https://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/ Legal Guide for bloggers] by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation
* [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/lcwa/html/lawlb/lawlb-overview.html
Law Library Legal Blawgs Web Archive] from the U.S. Library of
Congress
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blog
.
you're on gopherpedia.com^70/0//blog
back link is gopherpedia.com:70/1/