Blogs & Blogging

Easy to say – blogs are a form of citizen journalism. It looks like a mid-way for all those supports and/or criticize the theory that believes blogs are a form of journalism. What I dislike about it is not the views or the definition of the citizen journalism itself but the way people, even citizen journalists, believe the implementation of it by the mainstream media.

Wikipedia defines citizen journalism as:

act of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information

It also adds that JD Lasica, a citizen media theorist, classified media for citizen journalism into five types in his article in Online Journalism Review.

1) Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, photos or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community),
2) Independent news and information Websites
3) Full-fledged participatory news sites (OhmyNews),
4) Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin),
5) Other kinds of “thin media.” (mailing lists, email newsletters), and
6) Personal broadcasting sites

When citizen journalism is defined, people tend to give examples and those examples generally comes in the form of mainstream media. Like one published in The Kathmandu Post:

Is Kantipur or any other mainstream media giving out more space to the letters to the editor is integration of citizen journalism? Or Kantipur Television (or other television’s vox populi) Janmat an integration of citizen journalism? For me, it’s a big NO.

For me to be a citizen journalism or citizen journalism initiatives, the content (news or views) provided by the citizens have to be published without censoring and selection (all those that are socially okay in terms of language). Do the mainstream media’s letters to the editor section follow that ideal? Or can people go to television’s station asking for promotion of their ideas?

Let’s think about it.

Further reading:
The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism

With 2007 knocking on the doors, I am wondering what will happen in those 12 months next year in the Nepali blogosphere and what buzz can those blogs create. Off course, I have no study or research to make out predictions, but let me share what I think will happen to Nepali blogosphere next year.

When Gartner, an analyst group, released its ten key predictions for business and IT for 2007 and beyond a few days ago, blogging got a place. According to them, blogging phenomenon will peak next year with 100 million bloggers and then will level out (because people will have experimented with the blogging). Gartner says that there are now 200m ex-bloggers, and that the blogger figure will peak at 100m.

Off course there are people who are unsatisfied with the predictions. They say since only the 16.7 per cent of the world population are the users, 50 per cent of whom are based in North America and Europe, there are plenty of rooms for expansion and that the blogging phenomenon won’t diminish soon.

What about Nepal? We have 175,000 internet users (Sept 2005 – let’s go with the latest estimation of 300,000 internet users) and around 100 active blogs. And, the internet users are growing primarily because the internet cost is coming down and cable and broadband internet are making its way into the homes and offices. With these things on the back of my mind, here I make my predictions on Nepali blogosphere for the coming year.

Off course, there will be more blogs. Blogging has been a buzzword for quite a while in the world but its still relatively new to many internet users of Nepal. Some of them have already experimented with blogs and a very few of them have become the regular bloggers but there are still a lot of new Nepalese, who have the internet access, unknown to blogging.

The biggest catalyst in the increasing number of blogs will be the traditional media. It will be difficult to leave out the buzz of blogs. They will covering blogs and blogging thus promoting the ‘blog literacy’.

The increase in number of blogs will also help in diversity in blogs thus brining in more subjects and issues on the discussions.

So far, except for journalists, other blogs seems to be personal diary of normal people – people vitually unknown. But in coming years we can hope to see blogging by well known people. The beginning of blogging by celebrities, or well known public figures, will be the biggest asset for the Nepali blogosphere. Don’t hope to see politicians blogging though!

And, how long can top online news sites can remain indifferent from the benefits of having blogs? I believe in the coming years, the sites like NepalNews.com or eKantipur.com will certainly will look to incorporate blogs and that will begin the era of professional blogging as the bloggers will be hired (or hired personnel will be turned bloggers).

And also there will be organizations turning to blogs in their otherwise statis websites for giving more information about their activities. The Gurukul Blog, the blog in the site of the most theatre school of Nepal, is already in making.

I don’t know how much Google pays to Nepali bloggers for the adsense but it is safe to stay the amount will be much more in coming days as bloggers look to generate whatsoever possible revenue from their blogs.

However, I don’t see somebody turning professional bloggers based on the advertisement earnings soon (that is without asking for donations from the readers).

And the last one and this, I can be certain of. The Bloggers’ Association of Nepal (BLOGAN) will come into existence and will organize at least one bloggers’ conference in 2007. The unity of bloggers will help in the increment in the number of blogs and of course the ‘blog literacy’. I desperately look forward to attend the Nepali Blog Conference in Kathmandu, somewhere. Wouldn’t it be fun?

Happy New Year!

(PS: During the server change for NepaliVoices.com, I lost this post and the comments on it. I am re-uploading the post, but I have no way to bring back the comments. Very SORRY about that.)

This is an attempt to peek into the insights of the bloggers – of course through Nepalese bloggers – to find out why they blog. There are all sorts of bloggers, and their motives of blogging can be different, and this question may seem absurd to answer without specifically dividing bloggers into various groups, but as if has been found, in this and many other studies, the motives behind blogging is not very different among the diverse types of bloggers. This article is long – about 1600 words.

A 2003 study in USA summarized that ‘ordinary bloggers blog for a variety of reasons and often for more than one reasons.’ What the study discovered as the motivations for blogging were ‘documenting one’s life, providing commentary and opinions, working out emotional issues, thinking by writing and promoting conversation and community’.

A recent study in India, our neighbors with whom we share our cultures and probably also share thinking, found out that ‘having the platform for self-expression’ was the prime motivation for blogging. ‘Expressing passionate views’ and ‘entertaining readers by own writing’ was why most Indians bloggers began their blogs and ‘writing about their views and commentating on the world around them was what they enjoyed the most about the activity’ (blogging).

The same study also indicated that ‘a need ot share thier lives with family and friends as the strong motivators for India’s netizens to read blogs.’ Same may be said on the bloggers.

So what motivates Nepali bloggers? Why Nepalese are increasingly interested in blogging? In an attempt to find out that I ventured into emailing about 15 selected bloggers to answer the question. Ten of them replied me, and interestingly, five of them redirected me towards their entries in their blog that would answer my question. So, it was found that bloggers are trying to answer the question – probably they have wondered (at times) that why they were blogging. Continue reading…

(This is an article I wrote for another purpose quite a while ago. I am presenting this here for its value to understand the history of Nepali Blogosphere.)

Nepali blogosphere is an example of how a handful of people can use the internet easily to establish an alternative medium of information; and also how a political turmoil can foster the way for the citizens to emerge with their own media. Continue reading…

Everywhere I talk as a blogger, my audience are skeptical about the credibility of the blogs. I always have to answer the question: how can blogs go ahead since it lacks what the traditional media consider as one of the most important factor – the objectivity.

What I answer to them? Before going to my answer, let’s ponder on some issues.

Is there a absolute truth? NO. Truth depends on how you see it or who see it or at what situation you see it. Truth is subjective, not objective as many claim it to be.

Suppose you see a woman on the bikini at a place. What you would think on her? Ah, beautiful. And, will your thought remain same if you come to know that the girl is a Muslim? And, what if you are a Muslim yourself? I believe you thoughts will be different after each added piece of information and even your biases changes it. So, what’s the truth about the girl for others.

Media is not run by the sufferers or say insiders. Media professionals are always outsiders. They collect the information, view the entire event from outside and include their biases while writing the news.

Then wouldn’t it the media professional who filters the information and way to present it. Now, in this step those are involved who are not even the ones who acquired the information. So, how come traditional media be fairly objective?

In blogs, the bloggers posts their opinions on any events or the way they see it. Bloggers do not claim the information be entirely true – they just present it in their own way. But isn’t that what the ‘free press theory (or liberatian)’ : let the audience decide themselves. How much space does a blog entry leave for audience to ponder upon and how much the traditional media?

There is no straight-forward answers to any of these questions. Blogs at time can be objective, but are mostly subjective. Traditional media too can be subjective. So why there needed much questioning about the blog’s credibility?

Read blogs as subjective opinion of an individual – what matters you most: the numbers (or facts) or the human emotions? For me, I am as a human more interested in human emotions than the plain numbers.

After a weeklong tour to Seoul, South Korea, I am happily back to Nepal. And, now I find time to share the experience of talking about blogging as a panelist in one of the many sessions during the Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit at the Shilla Hotel.

Along with me, Enda Nasution of Indonesia, Dr. Awab Ali of Pakistan, Scarlett Li of China and Lam Oi-Wan of Hong Kong were the panelists of the session – Citizen’s Media Revolution moderated by an Asia 21 Fellow Joshua Ramo.

As I was first to go, I talked about how I started blogging and how is the Nepali blogosphere right now before going into what a blogging and citizen’s media is all about. Ali told about his experience with the Donate the Dollar and the government blocking of blogspot.com while Oi-Wan went with the her experience in Hong Kong.

Li was critical about Chinese blogosphere much to dismay to me and Ali and said Chinese blogging holds very little value in China.

Ali was much optimistic about blogging and said that the quickness of the blogging would one day replace the newspapers. I disagreed with him and said that it may change the role of newspaper but not going to replace it. We had a brief talk about it after the session too, and I think he agreed with my idea (well, probably I was trying to be optimistic about my professional career as a journalist).

The final question was about the creditability of blogs and I answered that saying that readers have to understand that blogs are written by an individual subject of personal biases.

I always believed that objectivity is itself subjective (I will tell you why sometime soon in another post) and that there is nothing called absolute truth.

Meanwhile, here are the entries I wrote for the official Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit blog – First Impression in Last Impression (Day I), A Fish in A Bowl (Day II) and Yeah! Yeah!! Yeah!!! (Day III).

I am going to South Korea to participate in the Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit – as a blogger. This will be the second conference for me as a blogger – the first being the Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace held in Manila, the Philippines earlier this year.

More than a foreign tour, what I like most about these conference is that I got to meet new people and learn from them. It was at Manila, where I met with Rebecca McKinnon of GlobalVoices and conceived the idea of NepaliVoices along with the realizing that we, as a blogger, should do something for the vibrant Nepali blogosphere.

What Nepali blogosphere, no matter how small it was, did during the direct rule of King Gyanendra is exemplary for the blogging world in understanding what blogging can do. Bloggers from China, Iran and even Singapore giving headaches to their rulers, but the role of Nepali blogs in advocacy for freedom of expression and democracy has contributed, probably only in a small scale, for the April Revolution – the mass revolt that forced the king to step down paving the way for people’s rule again.

The April Revolution is also important because it also paved the way for peace process that looks like ending the bloody insurgency. Nepali bloggers can be proud of that history – and of course, there are few bloggers like me who can really be proud of being the bloggers at that time. Sometimes, not-so-good events are opportunities.

In South Korea, I will be talking about Nepali blogosphere and the opportunities blogging provides to the citizens including the leaders. And, I hope to learn a lot of lessons from it despite the conference itself not being much about the blogging. I will share new things about blogging and the summit from South Korea if possible.

[This is a translated version of a blog entry by Say Na Something that talks about Nepali female bloggers. Thanks to her for allowing me to put it up here. The original Nepali version is here.]

I will start from myself. How is the lifestyle of a married woman? How they begin the day? What food they can cook? How they reach the office in hurry after finishing off morning duties? And, why bargain on vegetable price? What on Saturday? Normally, a married woman’s life is weaved into such things. But my life is different. This could be because, well, I and my husband have been separated physically and psychologically. Continue reading…

Have you heard of Citizen Journalism Nepal? It’s a site modeled on OhMyNews of South Korea (that anybody can write news on it and get paid for).

CjNepal is also a free blog host that means anyone can register and start their own blogs as in the blogger.com or wordpress.com. The site has been around for quite a few time but there is not much blogs registered so far (probably because many have never heard of it or maybe because we have a tendency of not believing on something started by a Nepali).

The site uses WordPress MU (also used by WordPress.com and blogsome.com). For the blogger, it’s same as using WordPress. The best things with CjNepal are the selection of 47 templates for the site, no bandwidth or space limitations. Right now, the server has 140GB of space and the site is supported by Syracuse University (not financially).

How come the idea of starting a free blog host for Nepali? The founder Prameya Bhandari says: “I was seeing a lot of Nepalese starting blogs on third party website. However, as I see they seem to stop blogging after a while, probably due to lack of related traffic, as CjNepal is a Nepali website, it might help get better traffic, thus encouraging more people to write regularly.”

He assures the site will have more templates and plugins in near future and promises to provide good support. Hopefully, he will think of using database backup plugin so that users can be assured their posts will be saved even if chose to go with new hosts.

Note:NepaliVoices has created a test blog at blogs.cjnepal.org/test and you can login with username test and password test if you want to go through the admin area for test purpose.

At United We Blog!, during the time of our peak, I realized the power of blogging. The way we were getting response and they way in which UWB! and Radio Free Nepal created a whirl in the blogging world by writing about the situation of the country made me question myself in amazement – if a few blogs can do this, what will it be like having a thousand bloggers?

The search for answer of that single question put something into me that I ventured into promoting blogging. I wanted a big Nepali blogoshpere – at least a thousand active bloggers not only a vibrant blog site. The listing of all Nepali blog sites in my personal The Radinat Star and creation of NepaliVoices is certainly a result of that thinking.

What I did that time to promote blogging was giving guest lectures in a few college teaching journalism with help from two of my friends – Bhuwan KC of Kantipur Television, who is also a journalism teacher, and blogger Tilak Pathak. We developed a course called Online Media as Alternative Media and took an hour long classes at Don Bosco, Madan Bhandari Memorial and Kathmandu City College. I don’t know how many participants of those classes began blogging.

My experience in blogging so far has made me learn a few way of promoting blogs – own and others. Here I am listing those so that I believe Nepali bloggers can help each other and create a vibrant blogosphere.

• Link – linking to each other’s blogs is the best way to promote each other’s blogs. It is also sharing readers (but not dividing them as they will continue visiting any blogs that interest them). Linked blogs are also rated high by search engines giving more visibility to the blogs.
• Read & Comment – if bloggers don’t feel like reading blogs then who else? So read the blogs that interest you and always take a minute to comment on blogs (that not only encourages bloggers to write more but also gives a link back to your blog).
• Talk – get in touch with fellow Nepali bloggers for, at least, a social network because you share a similar passion. Keeping in touch with fellow bloggers encourages you and her/him blog more. Compliment or comment on his/her writing through emails and chats.
• Act – tell your friends about your blogs and about Nepali blogosphere. Encourage them to start their own blogs. The more blogs created, the more bloggers will be there and certainly more blog readers.

Just I wanted to write about helping out each other.