Blogging Community

Blogging community is defined as a bunch of people of similar interests collectively participating and interacting on the same topic in a specific blog post. Certain blog communities even apply rules and guidelines by which participants have to adhere to and this creates a proper community atmosphere. Bloggers share what they know and learn through their posts and in return followers or readers contribute sufficiently by commenting or sharing (Wei, 2004).

Blogging communities have been identified and are segregated into 3 parts as below (White, 2006):

1. One Blog Centric Community:

In this community, the blog is known to be owned by one person or an organization collectively but may have multiple authors. The author has full control of comments as well as the flow of discussion and also has the authority to remove or censor comments. Detailed filters are also in the hands of the author who is the sole proprietor of the blog.

2. Topic Centric Community:

This form of community of bloggers arises when there is a common thought or interest which is shared among a group of people and membership is enforced as well as domain within the community. This sort of community basically begins through an exchange of thought on the same topic of interest.

3. Boundaried Community:

In this community, readers as well as blog writers are required to register in order to join the platform in which they may create their personal blog.

Blogging is considered to be a passive activity, therefore in order to build a community, readers are advised to participate and dive into the communities around by joining in on any discussion pertaining a topic of interest. By installing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) on your computer, you are then able to locate a community of interest efficiently rather than browsing through various sites (Denise, 2009). Apart from this software, the tagging option in any post also helps attract and categorize readers into topics of their interests, thus creating a community (Chastain, 2009). 

References

Chastain. S n.d, What is tagging, viewed 12 April 2012, <http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/glossary/a/tagging.htm> .

Denise 2009, How do you build community?, viewed 12 April 2012, <http://www.blogher.com/how-do-you-build-community >.

The star, n.d, RSS, viewed 12 April 2012, <http://thestar.com.my/rss/>.

Wei. C 2004, Formation of Norms in a Blog Community, viewed 12 April 2012, <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/formation_of_norms.html >.

White. N 2006, Blogs and community-launching a new paradigm for online community, going communal, edition 11, viewed 12 April 2012, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.

Classification of Blogs

The term blogging can be interpreted in different ways as many types based on how the information is presented. However, according to Rowse (2005) there are as many as 20 types of blogs and a few of them will be discussed further below.

The first kind of blog is instructional blogs where proper steps are included in the writers blog in order to complete a task, for instance to brew a proper mocha coffee or to dismantle a mobile phone completely (Knudson, 2003). Another type of blog would be corporate blogs where individuals promote their product or company and include descriptions of them in it as well. Personal blogs are blogs where writers merely share thoughts and ideas regarding topics at random to their readers. Video blogs are also at large these days and this is where the blogger opts for a video instead of writing it down, this is considered to be a more interactive method as opposed to writing (Knudson, 2003). Photo blogs are blogs where the bloggers simply posts up photos and pictures of any sort which enables comments from viewers, for example tumblr. Lastly would be review blogs where bloggers review an item which has been recently purchased, hardware or software, allowing readers to view the reviews and judge the product themselves, for example gizmodo.com where latest news and updates as well as reviews on gadgets are available (Bashbosh, 2009).

In my personal opinion, classification of blogs are not difficult to distinguish as they are easily sorted out to specific audiences through the material in which it contains (VanFossen, 2007). Each material has its own audience therefore classifying a blog is not much of a headache.

References

Bash Bosh Specials, 2009, ’25 Types of Blog Posts’ viewed 12 April 2012, <http://www.bashbosh.com/blog-post-types/>

Rowse, D 2005, ’20 Types of Blog Posts – Battling Bloggers Block’ viewed 12 April 2012, <http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/11/29/20-types-of-blog-posts-battling-bloggers-block/>

VanFossen, L 2007, Are you really writing for your blog audience?, viewed 12 April 2012, retrieved from http://www.blogherald.com/2007/05/04/are-you-really-writing-for-your-blog-audience/

Knudsen, J 2003, Introduction to mobile blogging, viewed 12 April 2012, retrieved fromhttp://developers.sun.com/mobility/midp/articles/blogging/

www.tumblr.com

www.gizmodo.com

The Blogging Phenomenon and its Benefits to Society

Over 50 million blogs have been tracked since 2006 by Technorati and it is reported that 175, 000 blog posts are checked in daily. This shows the waves which blogging has created that have swept our ever-growing community in terms of technology. Based on that statistic, one could only wonder the amount of blog posts that exist ever since Technorati began their annual reports back in 2004. Blogging has somewhat become a trend among writers and regular folk for purposes such as entertainment, news or even a public diary; however it has not replaced traditional forms of media despite being mainstream. 

It is said that a majority of bloggers are indeed highly educated and are a respected bunch with research showing that almost half of them having a graduate degree (Sussman, 2009). Apart from that, statistics also show that two-thirds of bloggers are males between the ages 18 and 44.

According to reports, there are four different types of blogs in existence and they include hobbyist (72%), part-timers (15%), self-employed (9%) and professionals (4%) (McLean, 2009). Bloggers who blog completely out of hobby do not make profit from their posts as opposed to part-timers, self-employed and professionals who actually derive profit from their blogs. 

The blogging phenomenon however varies from different cultures and nations, like for instance in Europe where blogging is not a popular endeavor among people. Only 2% of them write blogs, 11% reads them, and 37% are not even aware of blogs (Rubel, 2006). Contrastingly in Asia, blogging has spread like wild fire over the past decade, credit to popular American entertainment blogs such as people.com and perezhilton.com.

In Malaysia however, the blogging trend seems to be quite different from that of in the Western hemisphere. A strong majority of influential blogs are pertaining personal events which occur (28%) whereas politics and technology are right behind the majority (16%) (Loone, 2007). Popular blogs among Malaysians is believed to be those into politics such as Anwar Ibrahim as well as Lim Kit Siang as they offer an alternative perspective and understanding of happenings in and around the political ring without censorship (Wong, 2009).

References

Loone, S 2007, ’50 most influential blogs in Malaysia’, Sloone.wordpress, weblog post, 6 February, viewed 12 April 2012, <http://sloone.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>

McLean, J 2009, State of State of the Blogosphere 2009 Introduction, Technorati, 19 October, viewed 12 April 2012, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009-introduction/>

Rubel, S 2006, ‘Blogging slow to take off in Europe’, Micropersuasion, weblog post, 3 April, viewed 12 April 2012, <http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/04/blogging_slow_t.html>

Sussman, M 2009, Day 1: Who are the bloggers? SOTB 2009, Technorati, October 19, viewed 12 April 2012 <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-1-who-are-the-bloggers1/>

Technorati, 2006, State of blogosphere, viewed 12 April 2012 <http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000436.html>

Wong, A 2009, ‘Top 100 Malaysian blogs’, Rice blogger, weblog post, 7 May, viewed 12 April 2012,<http://www.riceblogger.com/top-100-malaysian-blogs/>

Purpose of this Blog

Firstly, this blog is created with the purpose of fulfilling the requirement of my Issues in Publication and Design assignment with ties with the University of South Australia for a degree in communications.

The secondary purpose of this blog however is to discuss issues surrounding our mainstream media such as newspaper, internet, television and others. The discussions that follow will underline the reasons behind the existence of these issues and how it is affecting our generation today. The audience in which I am reaching out to for this blog are fellow students of the same course as well as those interested in understanding issues in publication and design.

This is merely a very brief introduction on the detailed discussions which will be conducted in each different posting.