Don't know what a blog is? You're not alone: 62 percent of internet users are unfamiliar with the term as well, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. However, the growing buzz about blogs - short for weblogs - was significant enough to warrant the title "Word of the Year" in 2004 from dictionary maker Merriam-Webster.
The most sought after word of the year, blogs are basically online journals where people can share information, thoughts, links, and pictures. Visitors to a blog are often able to post comments in response to the blog's content.
Application developer and webmaster Ming Chow (E '02) is a frequent contributor of technical articles and weblog content to the O'Reilly Network, one of the world's foremost technical publishers.
"I've been writing weblogs for about a year now," Chow said. "I'm very passionate about my field of study, Computer Science. I wanted to find a way to contribute and communicate to the technical community. What better way is there to contribute and communicate...than to write weblogs for them?"
Chow has written blogs about various technical subjects including Gmail (Google's e-mail service), Microsoft's anti-spyware software, computer security, and several general computing/current event issues.
"The process is relatively simple: you can write whatever you want, whenever you want, and whatever style is comfortable for you," said Chow, who is teaching an ExCollege course this semester entitled "Security, Privacy, and Politics in the Computer Age."
"Most blog writers are
intellectuals with a college degree and are tech-savvy," Chow said. "[They] want to share their ideas and insights on various topics with the rest of the world."
Despite the recent interest in blogging, Chow said, "the whole concept of blogging isn't novel - it's like a personal diary or
commentary."
What is new, though, is the increasing readership blogs have seen in the past year. According the Pew Internet and American Life Project's report, blog readership rose by 58 percent last year. An estimated 32 million people have read blogs, 12 percent of whom posted comments.
The amount of blogs available online has also increased. According to the study, about seven percent of adults have written a blog.
The reasons for using blogs have also changed with time. Democrat Howard Dean recognized the forum blogs provided his supporters to discuss his campaign informally. Supporters posted links for contributions and spread the word about his campaign via their blogs. Bloggers were even later invited to report from the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
Blogs have also been utilized to quickly disseminate news concerning the recent tsunami tragedy and organize relief efforts for victims. They have enabled the sharing of photos and personal stories from first-hand witnesses across the globe.
The official "Blog of the Year," as named by Time magazine, however, played a role in a different headline in 2004. The winner, "Power Line," was created by three lawyers and challenged the credibility of a "60 Minutes" report regarding President Bush's National Guard service.
With these developments, blogs - once regarded as simply hobbies - are now considered by some to be an alternate news source.
Chow suggested that one reason people have turned to the internet and blogs for headlines is that "newspapers and the news on TV are printed or broadcasted a couple of times a day. News on the internet is updated constantly, up-to-the-minute, and sometimes even in real-time."
Chow also believes that blogs fill in the gaps conventional journalists may leave in their stories. "The news in the newspaper and the media downplays a lot of the issues," Chow said. "In other words, the news does not tell you everything - in fact, many of the important facts are not mentioned, due to political reasons."
"The Internet is a public domain, and in most weblogs, the political barrier is removed," Chow said. "Blogs have much more information than the conventional news story, and that's what people want - the full story."
Another benefit of blogs is the opportunity they provide readers to hear from and speak to their writers, who are considered "everyday" people. "There is a personal feel for blogs, and many blogs even include personal pictures, which add more significance to the story," Chow said. "People want to hear human experiences or 'people's voices' in articles - what other common people have to say about issues."
Those seeking to escape bias in the media, however, may not find blogs any more helpful than the typical outlets. "The cons of blogs are that many are opinionated and partisan," Chow said.
Matan Chorev, a fourth-year student in the Tufts/New England Conservatory Double Degree Program agreed that there can be biases in blogs. Chorev is teaching an ExCollege course entitled "The U.S. and the Middle East" where he uses online technology to host discussions between American students and their counterparts in Muslim countries in the Middle East.
"I find that oftentimes people read blogs of those whose opinion they share [as] a sort of validation method," said Chorev. "This is a trend in media as well: those with conservative political outlooks are not so likely to tune into NPR or watch Frontline, but are instead likely to tune into Fox News or syndicated talk-shows that facilitate discourse among conservatives,"
For this reason, Chow recommends that readers should "refer to several blogs on a particular subject in order to get the whole picture."
Chorev is skeptical that blogs will prove to be truly beneficial. "I am sure there are boundless positives about blogs, but I don't see how any of them help us address the principal dilemmas of media," Chorev said.
"In a time where media bias is so apparent, we as consumers have less and less time to diversify our news sources so that we have a better idea of what 'really' is going on in the world," Chorev said. "We tune in for the headlines in between meetings or activities and are not able to filter the news from the fodder. The addition of blogs into this already blistering dissonance only complicates our efforts further."
"I hope that people who use blogs as a news service or news commentary make sure to diversify their sources and not to rely exclusively on one source," Chorev added.
Even though he admits that blogs can on occasion be partisan, Chow reminds internet users that "blogging was never intended to compete with the news. The goal of blogging is to communicate to the masses," he said.
