VBB: How to Build a Blogosphere
sj’s transcribing this session on irc://irc.freenode.net/harvardbitstrans
ls ls ls ls ls ls ls where are you????? You so need to be here!!!!
ahem
Hoder, Ory, and Isaac Mao from Shanghai are coordinating this session. These notes are from the session.
Hoder began encouraging people to blog in Persia. One of the challenges is that a lot of free services are available in English, but not in other languages. He wrote instructions for one popular blogging service so people who didn’t speak English would know how to blog on that platform. Many bloggers have used his guidelines to start their weblogs.
Q: How many of the blogs, especially ones dealing with sensitive issues, are anonymous?
A: Hoder: Many blog anonymously.
Ory’s overview about Kenyan blogging covered how many of them are worried about writing publicly. By focusing on group blogs, she’s hoping to overcome that. Ory wrote one of the briefing documents. “Because Kenyans have lives,” as Ethan put it, they aren’t blogging very much.
Isaac shared his Chinese blog with us. The characters look beautiful. ls would be jealous. Isaac showed charts indicating the tremendous growth of blogging China/Chinese. He mentioned how Internet censorship hampers efforts to blog. Hoder added that a blogger’s blog might be blocked in such a way that s/he can still post to the blog, but cannot actually view the blog itself. Isaac addressed a topic I haven’t heard in blogging discussions before: illiteracy. Bloggers may not be able to directly reach a large portion of the population in China just because those people cannot read. Illiterate people also may not be able to manage a weblog.
Language, of course, it a factor with Chinese bloggers. Many of them don’t know English, so they don’t blog in English. How can they reach the English-speaking world? Isaac blogs in English, but not often. Krista mentions later that a good way to get around the language barrier is to learn the language.
Weld Professor of Law Charlie Nesson, founder of the Berkman Center, challenges us to do more to publicize these international weblogs and what they can do and recruit new bloggers.
If people in political power know they’re going to be leaving power soon, they might be more interested in getting their point across using another medium, suggests Jay Rosen. Is there some way to get them using weblogs?
A few people on IRC mentioned BloggerCorps, a project to match activists and non-profit groups interested in blogging with bloggers who can lend a hand. Rebecca MacKinnon said she can talk about this effort at an upcoming Thursday meeting.
