Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community.

According to Sifry’s Alerts April, 2007, there are over 120,000 new weblogs and 1.4 million new posts created daily. (Lara C. Ducate and Lara L. Lomicka, 2008, pp 10). More recent surveys by Technorati have shown that the United States consists of the majority of bloggers with 49%, Europe with 29%, Asian Pacific countries with 12%, Canada and Mexico with 7% and South America with 3%. Jon Sobel, author of the findings states that significant growth of mobile blogging is a key trend this year along with the influence of women and mom bloggers. 

Blogging in Malaysia for instance with the help of new media tools seem to be drawn to political issues. Besides unveiling the dark side of politics, political blogs have also proved efficient during political campaigns, in the countries where blogging was intense enough. (Boicu, R, 2011). These reasons for exposing and to publicize have become popular in the blogosphere not only in Malaysia but other countries that are politically questioned.

With the recent political issues happening in Malaysia, political blogs happen to be very prevalent so much so that it is at par with personal interest blogs and blog shops. Korea for example is a country that highly values physical appearance thus most of their blogs concern beauty. The benefits however for these prevalent blogs to the community would be that there is a canvas filled with a variety of opinions and options. Blogs encourage feedback and represent both a reading and a writing activity. In the best of cases, this kind of online writing stimulates debate, furthers critical analysis, and encourages articulation of ideas and opinions. (Godwin, J, 2006, pp. 10-11).

References

Boicu, R 2011, ‘Discursive norms in blogging’, Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication / Revista Romana de Jurnalism si Comunicare- RRJC, Vol. 6, no. 1, pp 54-62.

Ducate, LC and Lomicka, LL 2008, ‘Computer assisted language learning adventures in the blogosphere: from blog readers to blog writers’, Vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 9–28. 

Tomaszeski, M, Proffitt, J, McClung, S 2009, ‘Exploring the political blogosphere: perceptions of political bloggers about their sphere’, Atlantic Journal of Communication, Vol. 17, no. 2, p72-87, 16p.

Goh, JWP, Quek, CJ  & Lee, OK. (2010). An Investigation of Students' Perceptions of Learning Benefits of Weblogs in an East Asian Context: A Rasch Analysis, Educational Technology & Society.

Jon, S 2010 November 03, State of the Blogosphere 2010, viewed 20 April 2011 <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/>