Discussion or informational site published on the internet
A
blog
(a
truncation
of "
weblog
")
[1]
is an informational
website
consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in
reverse chronological order
so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the
web page
. 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
and 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.
[2]
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.
[3]
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 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.
[4]
History
The term "weblog" was coined by
Jorn Barger
[5]
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.
[6]
[7]
[8]
Shortly thereafter,
Evan Williams
at
Pyra Labs
used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog", meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs'
Blogger
product, leading to the popularization of the terms.
[9]
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
,
[10]
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
".
[
further explanation needed
]
Berners-Lee also 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.
[11]
From June 14, 1993, Mosaic Communications Corporation maintained their "What's New"
[12]
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.
[13]
Other early pioneers of blogging, such as
Justin Hall
, credit him with being an inspiration.
[14]
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.
[15]
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,
[16]
as is
Jerry Pournelle
.
[17]
Dave Winer
's Scripting News is also credited with being one of the older and longer running weblogs.
[18]
[19]
The Australian Netguide magazine maintained the Daily Net News
[20]
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, actually 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",
[21]
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.
Web site 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.
[15]
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.
[22]
- Blogger
(blogspot.com) was launched in 1999
[23]
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
.
[24]
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.
[25]
This led to
The Wall Street Journal
calling Navalny "the man
Vladimir Putin
fears most" in March 2012.
[26]
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
.
[27]
Israel was among the first national governments to set up an official blog.
[28]
Under
David Saranga
, the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
became active in adopting
Web 2.0
initiatives, including an official
video blog
[28]
and a
political blog
.
[29]
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.
[30]
The questions and answers were later posted on
IsraelPolitik
, the country's official political blog.
[31]
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".
[32]
Between 2009 and 2012, an
Orwell Prize
for blogging was awarded.
In the late
2000s
, blogs were often used on business websites and for
grassroots
political activism
.
[33]
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 tiny number of personal bloggers have become famous, both in the online community and in the real world.
- 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.
[34]
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 called planets from name of
Planet (software)
that perform such aggregation, hosting sites usually have
planet.
subdomain
in
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
,
[35]
[36]
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.
[37]
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
.
[38]
One early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and
EyeTap
device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as
sousveillance
. Such journals have been used as evidence in legal matters.
[
citation needed
]
- 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
.
[
citation needed
]
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".
[39]
- 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."
[40]
- 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.
[41]
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."
[42]
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,
[
original research?
]
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
.
[43]
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.
[44]
[
better source needed
]
Technorati rated
Boing Boing
to be the most-read group-written blog.
[43]
- 2008:
As of 2008
[update]
, blogging had become such a mania that a new blog was created every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
[45]
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 actually reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or noteworthy in specific cases.
[46]
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.
[
citation needed
]
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
.
[47]
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 Zuniga
(
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.
[48]
[49]
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,
[50]
the
Lulu Blooker Prize
.
[51]
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
.
[52]
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.
[53]
Legal and social consequences
Blogging can result in a range of legal liabilities and other
unforeseen consequences
.
[54]
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
.
[55]
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.
[56]
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.
[57]
Following the suit, the Malaysian government proposed to "register" all bloggers in Malaysia to better control parties against their interests.
[58]
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.
[59]
According to
Wired
magazine, Traffic Power had been "banned from Google for allegedly rigging search engine results."
[60]
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.
[61]
In 2009,
NDTV
issued a legal notice to Indian blogger Kunte for a blog post criticizing their coverage of the
Mumbai attacks
.
[62]
The blogger unconditionally withdrew his post, which resulted in several Indian bloggers criticizing NDTV for trying to silence critics.
[63]
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.
[64]
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".
[65]
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.
[66]
[67]
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".
[68]
The suit was postponed while Delta was in bankruptcy proceedings.
[69]
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.
[70]
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.
[71]
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.
[72]
In India, blogger Gaurav Sabnis resigned from
IBM
after his posts questioned the claims made by a management school.
[73]
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,
[74]
she wrote a novel based on her experiences and blog:
The Washingtonienne: A Novel
. As of 2006
[update]
, 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.
[75]
Catherine Sanderson, a.k.a.
Petite Anglaise
, lost her job in Paris at a British accountancy firm because of blogging.
[76]
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.
[77]
On the other hand,
Penelope Trunk
wrote an upbeat article in
The Boston Globe
in 2006, entitled "Blogs 'essential' to a good career".
[78]
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.
[79]
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.
[80]
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.
[81]
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.
[82]
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.
[83]
[84]
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
.
[85]
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",
[86]
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.
[87]
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
[88]
and developed a
Blogger's Code of Conduct
, which set out a
rules for behaviour
in the online space.
Behaviour
The
Blogger's Code of Conduct
is a list of seven proposed ideas.
See also
References
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For instance, Justin Hall started his site in January 1994, before most of us had heard of the web. I asked him, 'Well, you're one of the first bloggers, was there anyone out there who you were getting inspiration from?' And he pointed me to this other guy named Ranjit Bhatnagar who was keeping a site at moonmilk.com in 1993. And, sure enough, it was a reverse chronological list of stuff he found on the web.
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a
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I can make some claim to this being The Original Blog and Daybook. I certainly started keeping a day book well before most, and long before the term "blog" or Web Log was invented. BIX, the Byte information exchange, preceded the Web by a lot, and I also had a daily journal on GE Genie. Both of those would have been considered blogs if there had been any such term. All that was long before the World Wide Web.
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...Dave Winer... whose Scripting News (scripting.com) is one of the oldest blogs.
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"
Australian Net Guide
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,
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"The Man Vladimir Putin Fears Most (the weekend interview)"
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Fortune
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a
b
Israel Video Blog aims to show the world 'the beautiful face of real Israel'
, Ynet, February 24, 2008.
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Latest PR venture of Israel's diplomatic mission in New York attracts large Arab audience
, Ynet, June 21, 2007.
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Journalists deserve subsidies too
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Robert W. McChesney
and
John Nichols
,
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Job Interviews for Dummies
(3rd ed.). Indianapolis:
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
p. 197.
ISBN
9780470177488
.
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. Educause.Edu. July 7, 2009
. Retrieved
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2012
.
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Stephan Metcalf, "Fixing a Hole",
The New York Times
, March 2006
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Jennifer Saranow, "Blogwatch: This Old House",
The Wall Street Journal
, September 2007
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.
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2017
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"Blogging goes mobile"
.
BBC News
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June 5,
2008
.
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See for instance:
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. Global Voices
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April 2,
2011
.
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Gogoi, Pallavi (October 9, 2006).
"Wal-Mart's Jim and Laura: The Real Story"
.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
. Archived from
the original
on September 26, 2008
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August 6,
2008
.
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Jenkins, Henry (2006).
Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers
. New York: New York University Press. p. 151.
ISBN
978-0814742853
.
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a
b
Fickling, David,
Internet killed the TV star
,
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NewsBlog, August 15, 2006
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.
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. August 24, 2006
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. New York: Nicholas Brealey Publishing. p. 3.
ISBN
978-1857885200
.
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Marlow, C.
Audience, structure and authority in the weblog community
Archived
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. Presented at the
International Communication Association
Conference, May 2004, New Orleans, LA.
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.
Poynter.org
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2010
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"Flavor Flav Celebrates National Safety Month"
.
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.
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. October 11, 2005
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.
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"Blooker prize honours best blogs"
.
BBC News
. March 17, 2007
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June 5,
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Mutum, Dilip and Wang, Qing (2010). "Consumer Generated Advertising in Blogs". In Neal M. Burns, Terry Daugherty, Matthew S. Eastin (Eds) Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Advertising: User Generated Content Consumption (Vol 1), IGI Global, 248?261.
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.
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.
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.
Reporters Without Borders
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Kesmodel, David (August 31, 2005).
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.
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,
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. The Hoot
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. Abhishekarora.com. February 8, 2009. Archived from
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2013
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Sanderson, Cathrine (April 2, 2007).
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.
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. Archived from
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.
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.
USA Today
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.
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.
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. November 3, 2004
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.
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"Twelfth Omnibus Claims Objection"
(PDF)
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MacLeod, Donald (May 3, 2006).
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.
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.
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"Forget the Footnotes"
. Archived from
the original
on April 13, 2006.
- ^
Hansen, Evan (February 8, 2005).
"Google blogger has left the building"
. CNET News
. Retrieved
April 4,
2007
.
- ^
"Plaxoed! ≫ the official story, straight from the source [Mark Jen's life @ Plaxo]"
. Archived from
the original
on July 25, 2008
. Retrieved
September 10,
2008
.
- ^
"Bloggers join hands against B-school"
.
The Indian Express
. Archived from
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on December 14, 2005
. Retrieved
January 30,
2011
.
- ^
"The Hill's Sex Diarist Reveals All (Well, Some)"
.
The Washington Post
. May 23, 2004
. Retrieved
June 5,
2008
.
- ^
"Steamy D.C. Sex Blog Scandal Heads to Court"
.
NBC News
. December 27, 2006
. Retrieved
June 5,
2008
.
- ^
"Bridget Jones Blogger Fire Fury"
.
CNN
. July 19, 2006
. Retrieved
June 5,
2008
.
- ^
"Sacked 'petite anglaise' blogger wins compensation claim"
.
The Sydney Morning Herald
. March 31, 2007
. Retrieved
February 6,
2015
.
- ^
Trunk, Penelope (April 16, 2006).
"Blogs 'essential' to a good career"
.
The Boston Globe
. Retrieved
April 21,
2013
.
- ^
"NBA fines Cuban $200K for antics on, off court"
. ESPN. May 11, 2006
. Retrieved
June 5,
2008
.
- ^
Kierkegaard, Sylvia
(2006). "Blogs, lies and the doocing: The next hotbed of litigation?".
Computer Law & Security Report
.
22
(2): 127.
doi
:
10.1016/j.clsr.2006.01.002
.
- ^
"Egypt blogger jailed for insult"
.
BBC News
. February 22, 2007
. Retrieved
June 5,
2008
.
- ^
Knafo, Saki (September 15, 2011).
"Maikel Nabil Sanad, On Hunger Strike in Egypt, Is Dying"
.
HuffPost
. Retrieved
December 29,
2011
.
- ^
"Sudan expels U.N. envoy for blog"
.
CNN
. October 22, 2006
. Retrieved
March 14,
2007
.
- ^
"UN envoy leaves after Sudan row"
.
BBC News
. BBC. October 23, 2006
. Retrieved
October 24,
2006
.
- ^
"Burma blogger jailed for 20 years"
.
BBC News
. November 11, 2008
. Retrieved
March 26,
2010
.
- ^
"Headrush.typepad.com"
. Headrush.typepad.com
. Retrieved
April 21,
2013
.
- ^
Pham, Alex (March 31, 2007).
"Abuse, threats quiet bloggers' keyboards"
(PDF)
.
Los Angeles Times
. Archived from
the original
on June 25, 2008
. Retrieved
June 5,
2008
.
- ^
"Blog death threats spark debate"
.
BBC News
. March 27, 2007
. Retrieved
June 5,
2008
.
Further reading
- Alavi, Nasrin.
We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs
, Soft Skull Press, New York, 2005.
ISBN
1-933368-05-5
.
- Bruns, Axel, and Joanne Jacobs, eds.
Uses of Blogs
, Peter Lang, New York, 2006.
ISBN
0-8204-8124-6
.
- Blood, Rebecca.
"Weblogs: A History and Perspective"
Archived
May 30, 2015, at the
Wayback Machine
. "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.
ISBN
1-59315-141-1
.
- Gorman, Michael
.
"Revenge of the Blog People!"
.
Library Journal
.
- Heriot, Gail,
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.
A Blogger's Manifesto: Free Speech and Censorship in the Age of the Internet
(London: Anthem Press, 2007).
- Rosenberg, Scott
,
Say Everything: how blogging Began, what it's becoming, and why it matters
, New York : Crown Publishers, 2009.
ISBN
978-0-307-45136-1
- Weinberger, David
(August 31, 2015),
"Why blogging still matters"
,
The Boston Globe
External links
Look up
blog
in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikiquote has quotations related to
Blogging
.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Blogs
.
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