Blogs

The collapse of the economic viability of print media across the world in the first decade of the 21st century signified a profound shift in global communications. A growing number of citizens, especially in the West, began to gain their news and information principally from online sources. During the previous century, newspapers, radio, and television provided a static relationship with the “truth,” with little interaction with the consuming public.

The Internet interrupted this one-sided dynamic. “Online social media,” argues Steve Anderson (2009), the national coordinator for the U.S.-based Campaign for Democratic Media, “represent something of a return to a pre-print oral culture—more of an ongoing dialogue than a form of production and consumption—in the form of commentary, anecdotes and shared stories” (para. 3). Blogs are one of the key tools of this revolution. There are literally hundreds of millions of bloggers around the world writing about personal issues, politics, sex, democracy, and freedom. There are no boundaries to what can be written or expressed. While bloggers in the United States may opine about the trials and tribulations of their own government, web users in Iran express support or criticism of the mullahs, often paying a high price for doing so. Readers are given the privileged opportunity to hear the whispers of once silenced voices.

In repressive states, blogs and websites have become essential sources of information on topics—from women's issues to sexual orientation, dating rituals to human rights—routinely shunned by channels for official propaganda. Western journalists are increasingly turning to these sources to gain insights into societies that are impossible to easily define or condemn. Blogs can entirely bypass the necessity of a foreign journalist representing the views of individuals, the mainstay of Western media conventions.

Cultural bias inevitably shades any understanding of our world. It is important for relatively privileged Westerners to see how the non-Western world views them, both as a comparison and counterpoint. We can learn directly where our tax dollars and weapons are going. Those on the receiving end of U.S.-backed dictatorships across the globe now have the means through which they can articulate their own perspectives to be read by both locals and the world. A private audience for online work has become virtually nonexistent. The very nature of these blog posts does not in itself make them fascinating or insightful, but bloggers in, say, Egypt or Saudi Arabia know that dissenting from the party line could bring prison or worse.

For example, China, the world's largest Internet market—over 400 million people and growing—has developed a diverse web community, although it remains highly regulated and censored, assisted by Western multinationals such as Google, Yahoo, Cisco, and Microsoft. How much is known about Yahoo's or Google's willingness to modify their behavior to please Chinese officials? Western executives of these companies have seemingly been comfortable with allowing their Chinese counterparts to self-censor thousands of sensitive keywords, far more than just democracy and Falun Gong. Moreover, they seem to be ignoring developments that some consider disturbing, such as Yahoo China's decision in 2008 to post images of wanted Tibetans on its home page after the Lhasa uprising before the Beijing Olympic Games.

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