Current Blogosphere

Blogging does not matter gender, age, and interest boundaries which brought benefits to the field of communication and cultural (SLAC, 2006). Branckaute (2010) stated BlogPulse.com had tracked the current blogosphere which contains almost 150 million blogs worldwide recently. Most of these bloggers are in U.S. (29.22%), followed U.K. (6.75%)and Japan (4.88%) whereas Malaysia (1.7%) had ranked number 14 in the list (Sysomos, 2010).
























Source: Sysomos.com, 2010


According to MSN Survey, blogging in Asia is a current phenomenon which is usually used for self-expression and society connection (Gatoc, 2009). More than half of the respondent from the survey said that the most of the bloggers blog for the purpose to share personal journals and photos but some of them challenged the authorities. Countries such as Hong Kong, Tibet, Thailand, Korea even Malaysia often use blogs as a path to challenge the authorities (Gatoc, 2009).

In Malaysia, Daniel Chandranayagam, an editor of CSR Digest had provided 2 schools of Malaysian blogging which are political and casual (BG, 2010). Chandranayagam also stated that casual bloggers are those who writes their own journal online (usually use Myspace/Blogspot/Friendster) while political bloggers are those who touch on authorities, whether for or against them (BG, 2010). These casual blogs affects the thinking and lifestyles of the society as people often use these blogs to be updated to the latest trends. Political blogs actually create a larger impact which people can voice out their opinions towards the government and receive more information from different parties.

References
1. BG 2010, Can you map the social effect of Malaysia’s Chinese schools?, viewed on 28/9/2010, retrieved from http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/03/malaysias_blogosphere

2. Branckaute, F 2010, State of the blogosphere 2010, viewed on 27/9/2010, retrieved from http://www.blogherald.com/2010/09/20/state-of-the-blogosphere-in-2010/

3. Gatoc, L 2009, Blogging in Asia: cases of new media suppression and blogger arrests in the region, viewed on 28/9/2010, retrieved from http://www.suite101.com/content/blogging-in-asia-a94022

4. SLAC 2006, Blogging: cultural phenomenon & practical communication tool, viewed on 27/9/2010, retrieved from http://www-project.slac.stanford.edu/wis/pages/past_seminars/nextseminar67.htm

5. Sysomos 2010, Inside blog demographics, viewed on 28/9/2010, retrieved from http://www.sysomos.com/reports/bloggers/