What is a weblog? A weblog, or blog, is a personal journal on the web. Weblogs express as many different subjects and opinions as there are people writing them. Some blogs are highly influential and have enormous readership while others are primarily intended for a close circle of family and friends.

The power of weblogs is that they allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas, and millions more to comment on them. Blogs are a fluid, dynamic medium, more akin to a 'conversation' than to a library — which is how the Web has often been described in the past. With an increasing number of people reading, writing, and commenting on blogs, the way we use the Web is shifting in a fundamental way. Instead of being passive consumers of information, more and more Internet users are becoming active participants. Weblogs let everyone have a voice

อ่านเพิ่มเติมและอ้างอิงจาก technorati

The Pew Internet study estimates that about 11%, or about 50 million, of Internet users are regular blog readers. A new weblog is created every 7.4 seconds, which means there are about 12,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers — people who write weblogs — update their weblogs regularly; there are about 275,000 posts daily, or about 10,800 blog updates an hour

We believe that public communication and information systems are critical to the maintenence of democratic societies now and are likely to be increasingly so in the future. We also believe that other community core values such as cultural identity, economic development, health, and education can be well-served through well-designed public systems. At the same time we believe that world citizens acting through public interest groups can help these achieve their inherent potential..

CPSR Community Networks

New data on blogs and blogging / Posted by Lee Rainie at 12:08 PM |Monday, May 2, 2005 | PIP Comment

We continue to ask about blogging in our tracking surveys and have some numbers to update from our last report in early January, "The State of Blogging." They show some level of growth in blog creators, and not much change in the number of blog readers.

In two surveys of American adults conducted between January 13 and March 21 that involved 2,871 internet users, we found that 9% of internet users now say they have created blogs and 25% of internet users say they read blogs.

Another way to render these numbers is to note that 6% of the entire U.S. adult population (internet users and non-users alike) have created blogs. That’s one out of every 20 people. And 16% of all U.S. adults (or one in six people) are blog readers.

These new figures for blog creation represent a bit of an increase – though within the survey’s margin of error – from the 7% of internet users who reported to us in November they had created blogs. That translates into more than 11 million American adults who say they have created blogs. The percent of blog readers is a small percentage drop – again, within the margin of error – from the 27% of internet users who reported to us in November that they read blogs. The new number translates into 32 million American adults who read blogs.

Some 11% of online men say they have created blogs and 8% of online women have created them.

Blogging is very much the province of the young. Fully 19% of online Americans ages 18-29 have created blogs, compared to 5% of those 50 and older.

When it comes to blog reading, online men and women are equally as likely to have browsed the blogosphere. Again, those ages 18-29 are much more likely to have read blogs than their elders: 36% of online younger adults have read blogs compared to 18% of those who use the internet and are 50 and older.

And some other context for the blog readership figures: The number of adult readers of blogs is about 40% of the size of the talk radio audience. According to a survey a year ago – May 2004 – by the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, 40% of all American adults are regular or occasional listeners. And that same survey showed that about 79% of American adults regularly or sometimes read daily newspapers. So, the blog-reading audience is about 20% of the size of the newspaper-reading population.

The combined surveys have a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.

The tried and true activities that internet users will do online:

*Researching a product or service before buying it – 78% of all adult internet users have done this

*Getting travel information – 73% have done this

*Buying a product – 67% have done this

*Take a virtual tour of a location online – 45% have done this

*Look for religious or spiritual information – 30% have done this

*Sending or receiving an invitation to a meeting or party using an online invitation service – 12% have done this

Netting Your Nuptials / Tuesday, April 12, 2005 | Posted by Mary Madden at 18:07 PM |

BLOGGING, JOURNALISM & CREDIBILITY:
Battleground and Common Ground
A conference
January 21-22, 2005 at Harvard University


Executive Summary

"Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility: Battleground and Common Ground" was a conference held in late January at Harvard, at which a group of 50 journalists, bloggers, news executives, media scholars, and librarians sat down to try and make sense of the new emerging media environment. Since the conference, the resignation of CNN's Eason Jordan and the Jeff Gannon White House incident have shown how powerful weblogs can be as a new form of citizens' media. We are entering a new era in which professionals have lost control over information – not just the reporting of it, but also the framing of what's important for the public to know. To what extent have blogs chipped away at the credibility of mainstream media? Is credibility a zero-sum game – in which credibility gained by blogs is lost by mainstream media and vice versa?

Conference participants believed the answer, ultimately, is no. Bloggers and professional journalists alike share a common goal: a better informed public and a stronger democracy. So now what?



By the end of a day and a half of discussion, the following "take-aways" emerged:

The new emerging media ecosystem has room for citizens' media like blogs as well as professional news organizations. There will be tensions, but they'll complement and feed off each other, often working together. (See Session 1 and Jay Rosen's essay in Appendix A1)


The acts of "blogging" and "journalism" are different, although they do intersect. While some blogging is journalism, much of it isn’t and doesn’t aim to be. Both serve different and valuable functions within the new evolving media ecosystem. (This theme recurred and was reinforced in all sessions.)


Ethics and credibility are key, but extremely hard to define. There are no clear answers about how credibility is won, lost, or retained – for mainstream media or bloggers. It's impossible and undesirable for anybody to set "ethical standards" for bloggers, but it's also clear that certain principles will make a blogger or journalist more likely to achieve high credibility. Transparency is key but isn't enough. Credibility also depends on a relationship of trust that is cultivated between the media organization or blog and the people it aims to serve. (See Session 3 and Bill Mitchell's paper in Appendix A2)


Many media organizations now see blogging – or the use of some form of participatory citizens’ media – as a way to build loyalty, trust, and preserve credibility. They are still experimenting with ways to do that. Examples include:


o Relationships between local newspapers and local blogger communities One example is the close relationship between the Greensboro News & Record and community blogging site, "Greensboro 101" (See Session 1)



o News organizations such as MSNBC are starting their own blogs within their own websites, some written by their own journalists and some by guest bloggers. (See sessions 3 and 4)



o Some news organizations such as Minnesota Public Radio are working to build databases and communication systems in order to tap the expertise of audience members who do not blog, but who would like to help with stories.



New experiments in citizens' journalism are emerging. They include:


o Wikinews: an all-volunteer, distributed effort to build a new site. (See Session 7)



o Dan Gillmor's grassroots journalism project: an effort – still under development – to harness the best of citizens' efforts with quality editing and reporting by experienced journalists. (See Session 7)



o Jeff Jarvis' hyper-local citizens' media project: a news project that uses weblogs to target very specific local niche audiences. (See Session 4)


Opening up online archives of news stories for free public access may make business sense in addition to bolstering credibility and audience loyalty. Right now, most newspapers and news agencies only make their content free on the web for a couple of weeks, and then it goes behind a paid firewall, lost to bloggers for linking. The predominant view at the conference was that by making archived content free, not only will news companies provide a tremendous social benefit and thus gain credibility, but the traffic they will receive through links to their archived material – and the ability to place advertising on that content – will likely make up for the lost archive access fees. (See Sessions 4, 7, and 8)


A number of questions remained unanswered, including:

Are blogs (or wikis) the best way to distill and help people make sense of the grassroots conversation bubbling up or do we need to create new and better tools?

What will the new business model be? Nobody knows yet. It's likely to emerge organically by media path breakers.

How can we make the conversation more inclusive of socioeconomic groups that are not currently involved in blogging, have little internet access, or whose lives do not involve much internet use?

How much of this conversation is relevant only to the US, and how much is relevant to the entire world?


Final conclusion:

Strengthening the public discourse, and strengthening democracy, is indeed the common ground shared by professional journalists, bloggers, wikipedians and others involved in the creation of grassroots media.



The conference established two important things: 1) that this common ground does indeed exist, and 2) that all are eager to work together. The goal is to create a better society and better means of giving citizens both the information they need and the forums of discourse required to hold their leaders truly accountable. Now we need to figure out how to achieve that goal. This conference has helped point us in the right direction, but the journey has only just begun.