Blogs: The Internet Phenomenon

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It is amazing that many people do not know the origins of the word blog especially when blogging has become one of the Internet's biggest phenomenon. Blog is actually a contraction of the term web log (Blood, 2000). Content on blogs are typically a combination of words and graphics and sometimes added with audio and video. This results in blogs being multimodal texts. Multimodal texts are texts which communicate in more than one mode (Walsh, 2006). This is perhaps one of the reasons why blogging has become such a worldwide hit. It enables individuals to express themselves not only through conventional writing but also through images, audio recordings and video presentations.

Based on a study conducted by Universal McCann in March 2008, there are approximately 184 million blogs worldwide (Technorati, 2008). This number is ever growing and Technorati (2009) reported that in the United States, blogs played an integral role in the 2008 presidential campaign where citizens used blogs to publish commentaries relating to the campaign. In Malaysia, political blogging is not something uncommon. Politicians like Anwar Ibrahim, Jeff Ooi and Lim Kit Siang have blogs which according to a study in 2007 by Sabahan.com, are amongst the 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia.

References:

As a conclusion, we can say that blogs have become a very powerful media tool in which not only ordinary citizens are using but also politicians.

Blood, R 2000, Weblogs: A history and perspective, viewed 12 November 2009, <http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html>.

Sabahan 2007, 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia, viewed 12 November 2009, <http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>.

Technorati 2008, State of the blogosphere: Introduction, State of the Blogosphere 2008, viewed 12 November 2009, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-introduction/>.

Technorati 2009, Day 5: Twitter, Global Impact and the Future Of Blogging, State of the Blogosphere 2009, viewed 12 November 2009, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/page-2/>.

Walsh, M 2006, 'The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-27.