Blogs and Communities

ABC News
White N.
Blogging Ethics

‘The best bloggers talk in their own voice, celebrate their unique identity and tell the stories that are real to them.’ (Glaser 2005)

What are blogs?
I know what you are thinking, ‘A blogging idiot explaining about blogs?’ Yes! Here are some information I have gathered from experts of blogs and communities.

Blogs are literally online diaries with articles, writings, images and links (ABC News 2005). Entries are typically listed starting with the most recent postings to the oldest postings. Most blogs allow readers to leave their own comments or links to topics and other Web sites relevant to the entry or the blog's topical focus.

‘Blogospheres’ are created when bloggers interact with each other’s blogs centered around specific themes, topics or interests.

Blog based communities today
There are three types of communities (White N. 2006).
Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community is the first forms of blog based community that emerged when readers begin to comment and get to know the blogger and the community of commentors. The blog is owned by one owner or organization. In additional, the power of this community is firmly in the central blogger’s control. For example, take a look at Stephen Downes (key blogger) and Anecdote (run by an organization).

Central Connecting Topic Community is a network formation. This form is a community that arises between blogs sharing a common interest. The boundary of the network is a combination of subject matter (domain) and membership (community). Both power and identity are distributed across the community. Take a look at the

Global Voices and community.



Boundaries Communities are collections of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform. An example of this community is MySpace. Most of these include discussion boards, social networking features and instant messaging.

Some interesting blogs: (click on the images)

Xia Xue's blog is one of the most popularly read blog. Though some comments are rather direct, they are rather interesting as well. More than the many pretty pictures of herself, she included one section- XiaXue Media Centre. This is where she places her interviews and other interesting articles.

Mr. Brown is an entertaining blogger. He uses humor and posts interesting subjects happening around. For example his posting on 'Who is a Singaporean?'

Read them for yourself!