Let’s all blog (and bring down a government)!

Jaspal Kaur gave an interesting presentation within the ‘Internet Content’ stream, just before lunch.  Her PhD research at Aberystwyth is looking at citizen written media and ‘amateur’ investigative journalism conducted through the use of blogs and other social networking tools in Malaysia.  This country has a highly regulated and controlled official media – it also has a good level of information technology infrastructure: 3G and broadband are increasingly common in households.  The denial of the 2/3 majority government in the March 2008 elections was widely reported as caused by an increase in the use of new media and ‘cyberdissidents’ who spoke out against the previous government and who carried increasing credence.

Some of the resources mentioned by Jaspal might well be useful for academic blogs – the New York blog Huffington Post promotes citizen written blogs, and Reporters Without Borders is almost a handbook for blogging and avoiding censorship (maybe not quite what Digital Directions needs), but nevertheless a useful resource for hints and tips on style, content, how to target your audience etc.

There appears to be a large number of citizens using new media in Malaysia.  Over 500 thousand use LiveJournal within a population of 27 million.  Their website illustrates that just short of 20 million LiveJournal accounts have been created since 1999, although many will be unused.