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| Image and Article Source: http://www.rebeccasaw.com/sg-straits-times-the-jothy-curry-house-case-my-2-cents-worth/ |
Reading the Jan 28 article titled 'Blog hit fish head eatery's business - Bloggers worried about impact of libel suit by Sabah restaurant owner' by Carolyn Hong, it's amazing to reflect on how much blogs have invaded our culture and influenced us socially in the last 10 years. Before blogging became popularity, the mainstreams of news were newspapers and television. Traditionally, media has always been a 'push' media and media operators decide what audiences be told.
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| Image Source: http://howtoblog.org/ |
Internet reshaped the way information was delivered. In the beginning, ‘surfers started creating logs of the information they collected, and soon evolved into web logs’ which subsequently evolved to the term ‘blogs’ (Hall 2006,p.2). One of the advantages of blogging lies in its potential to reveal news conventional media attempts to hide. On a narrower scope, personal blogs enables voices of individuals to be heard.
Due to popularity, some bloggers have a greater impact on its audiences than others. However, these individuals are not necessarily equipped with proper journalism ethics or knowledge of the social responsibilities they should possess. This case is one of the instances that show how the ignorance of a blogger can cause about harm to other individuals. Bloggers need to find the balance between freedom of speech and social responsibility that may contradict each other.
Reference
Hall, R S 2006, The Blog Ahead: How Citizen-Generated Media Is Radically Tilting the Communications Balance, Morgan James Publishing, New York
