Blogging In India - A Comprehensive Report By Http://trak.in

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‘I blog, therefore I am’

A dissertation submitted in the partial fulfillment of the programme

Master in Communication Studies (M.Cm.S.)

by Sneha S. Gore [email protected] Department of Communication Studies University of Pune

guided by

April 2009

Mr. Vishram Dhole

Pune

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Certificate

This is to certify that Ms. Sneha Gore, a student of department of communication studies, university of Pune has completed her final semester research dissertation titled ‘I blog, therefore I am’ during December 2008 to April 2009 This dissertation is submitted for the partial fulfillment of the requirements of Master in Communication Studies (M.Cm.S) Programme conducted by Department I have guided her on various topics and methods during this research project.

Pune- 411007

Vishram Dhole

April 30, 2009

Research Guide

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Acknowledgments This dissertation is not a single handed effort, nor was it completed in one day. There were many contributors to it, directly and indirectly, without whom this research thesis wouldn’t have reached fruition. I would like to thank our head of the department Prof. Dr. K R Sanap who is always there for all of us, providing an unconditional support. I would like to thank Dr. R K Madhavi, with whom I share academic as well as friendly relations and whose discussion with me on various topics has contributed to this dissertation. I deeply thank my research guide Prof Vishram Dhole, who was there with me right from the topic selection, topic development and the results. He has been there at various tough corners of this research activity. And he has a large contribution in developing me as a communication student. I thank all my respondents right from the heart, without whose contribution it would have been simply impossible to conduct my research. I must specially mention Navin Kabra and Pradnya Shidore, who have helped me a lot to get my respondents, to get reference material for research, and any other help which I needed. I would like to thank my junior friend Jeet Gupta for helping me with the research process. I thank my designer friend Deepti Bhadbhade who has made an interesting cover page of this dissertation. I would again like to extend the heartfelt thanks to all of them whose names I might have missed, but for that, their contribution does not remain even slightly unimportant. and finally I express my deepest gratitude towards my parents, Smruti and Hrushikesh, for supporting me unconditionally and with great love, in all the academic and non academic activities I have undertaken, for shaping me in positive ways and for making me what I am today. This is for you.

Sneha 30th April, 2009

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ABSTRACT Blogging is an emerging and contemporarily popular medium. Except certain cases, why do millions of people indulge in blogging remains a question worth investigating. Also, the entire communication process in case of blogs is significantly different than traditional media. The senders’ and receivers’ cognitive and the psychosocial factors influence a complete process of communication. What are the blogging related thoughts and behaviors of the bloggers and how are the blogs used by them becomes a sender centric issue, worth studying with a communication perspective. The aim of this research is to study the young Indian urban bloggers with reference to their psychosocial activity and other factors influencing that. To achieve this aim it was broken in objectives of studying the blogging activity, understanding the motivations behind blogging and other factors influencing it, as well as looking the bloggers with reference to various entities existing in real and virtual society. The goal here is not to generalize the findings, but to show a range of blogging contours. To achieve this aim, 20 bloggers were selected based on specific criterion, and a qualitative method of in depth interviews was executed. Various inferences were made after the analysis, some of the important being the motivations and needs behind blogging, the issue of being a ‘sender’, the influence of reactivity on blogging, the opinions about moral issues such as blogging ethics and censorship, and the bloggers’ perception about the contemporary mainstream mass media. Six blogging motivations were found namely, self expression, love for writing, peer influence, information seeking/sharing, socialization, and self documentation. The motives were found to be related to some other factors of blogging activity like the interactivity. The blogging behaviors were also inferred to have close bearings by the social environment around and the values. And hence, many contours of the Indian urban bloggers and their blogging activity were studied. The outcomes of this research can’t be generalized, but could serve as the signs to significant areas of study hereafter.

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Contents ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................................... 4 1.

INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 7 1.1

The ‘blog’....................................................................................................................................... 8

1.2

Who are blogging and what is blog used for? .............................................................................. 9

1.3

The blogging history ...................................................................................................................... 9

1.4

Micro blogging ............................................................................................................................ 10

1.5

Indian blogosphere ..................................................................................................................... 10

1.6

Blurring with mass media ........................................................................................................... 12

1.7

Problems about blogs ................................................................................................................. 14

1.7.1 2.

3.

4.

5.

Defamation ............................................................................................................................. 14

REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...................................................................................................................... 15 2.1

The earlier models of communication ........................................................................................ 16

2.2

The Reasons behind blogging ..................................................................................................... 18

2.3

Blogging and journalism.............................................................................................................. 22

THE AIMS AND OBJECTIVES ................................................................................................................ 27 3.1

Aim .............................................................................................................................................. 28

3.2

Objectives.................................................................................................................................... 28

METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................................. 29 4.1

Research method ........................................................................................................................ 30

4.2

Sampling ...................................................................................................................................... 30

4.3

Sample size.................................................................................................................................. 30

ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................................. 31 5.1

The range of topics ..................................................................................................................... 34

5.2

The interactivity .......................................................................................................................... 34

5.3

Blog over mail ............................................................................................................................. 36

5.4

Twitter ......................................................................................................................................... 37

5.5

The Motivation behind blogging ................................................................................................. 40

5.6

The needs behind the motivation ............................................................................................... 43

5.7

Reactivity..................................................................................................................................... 45

5.8

Being a sender in the communication process ........................................................................... 48

5.9

Credibility of bloggers ................................................................................................................. 50

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Blog and media ........................................................................................................................... 53

5.11

Ethics and censorship.................................................................................................................. 60

5.12

The ‘not- so-goods’ of blogging .................................................................................................. 62

5.13

Crystal gazing- predicting future of blogs ................................................................................... 63

6.

DISCUSSION......................................................................................................................................... 65 6.1

Twitter ......................................................................................................................................... 66

6.2

The motivations and needs behind blogging .............................................................................. 67

6.3

The reactivity .............................................................................................................................. 67

6.4

Credibility of the bloggers ........................................................................................................... 69

6.5

Blog ethics and censorship.......................................................................................................... 71

6.6

Blogs as mass media?.................................................................................................................. 73

7.

CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 74

8.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE SCOPE...................................................................................................... 78 8.1

Limitations................................................................................................................................... 79

8.2

Scope for further research .......................................................................................................... 80

9.

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................... 81

10.

APPENDICES .................................................................................................................................... 84

10.1

Appendix (A) - Questionnaire ..................................................................................................... 85

10.2

Appendix (B) – Jargon of blogs.................................................................................................... 86

10.3

Appendix (C) – Coded transcript ................................................................................................. 88

10.4

Appendix (D) the respondents’ information and contacts ......................................................... 99

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1. INTRODUCTION

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1.1 The ‘blog’ Blog is a term which originated in the last decade, and it has become increasingly popular ever since. It is a contraction of the term ‘weblog’. The term was coined by John Barger in 1997, and first blogging tool, by the name of ‘blogger’ was devised by Pyra labs. ‘Blog’ is used as a noun, and ‘to blog’ is used as a verb, which is understood as’ to write blog’. A Person who blogs is called a ‘blogger’. What exactly qualifies as blogs on large scale is a complex answer, though some have tried to define the term blog according to their own interpretations of the term. Wikipedia describes it as “a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.” Live journal defines it as a simple-to-use (but extremely powerful and customizable) personal publishing (“blogging”) tool, built on open source software. As the tool progressed, English dictionaries like oxford and Merriam Webster also included the term ‘weblog’ and also ‘to blog’. In fact, in the year 2004, blog (“a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer”) was the most frequently requested entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It is understood that all blogs are on the internet, and the collective community of them is called the blogosphere. There have been numerous attempts to measure the exact number of blogs, though there are differences in measurement. Technorati, a real time search engine for searching blogs, claims that they have tracked 133 million blogs since 2002. Whereas universal McCann says there are 189 million bloggers worldwide. Still, the great scope of blogosphere is reflected. Also, the entire blogosphere does not work in English. Technorati has tracked blogs from 81 different languages in June 2008. Hence, it is clear that blogging has truly become a worldwide phenomenon.

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1.2 Who are blogging and what is blog used for? Bloggers are not homogenous group of senders; they differ in all possible ways. And With new technological advancements every day, the popularity as well as the functions of blogs rose immensely in last five years. Blogs are developing rapidly into a mean of expression, a mass media, a publicity tool, an educational tool as well as a research domain. Everybody has got a new personal space to express online. Companies have started their own blogs for marketing. For ex. Google, GE, sun etc companies have their CEOs blogging. Celebrities in every sphere of life have started their own blogs, interacting with their fans, using it more or less as publicity tool. India is also no exception to it, with industry, bollywood, media and politics’ big names stepping into it.

1.3 The blogging history The modern day blogging evolved from online diary, where people would keep account of their everyday lives. It is said that in 1993, Dr. Glen Barry invented blogging, defined as web based commentary, linking to other articles. As technology progressed, the production and maintenance of writing became increasingly easy, so that it became more feasible for larger and less technical population to start own weblogs. After Pyra labs launched their own blogging tool named ‘blogger’ in 1999, the blog hosting platforms increased in number. Some of the services for posting blogs including ‘blogger’ are available like ‘Wordpress’ ‘Xanga’ ‘Myspace’ ‘Live journal’ ‘Open diary’ and so on. Today, all of these and around 50 more sites host millions of blogs. The media systems have started taking blogging seriously; at least in the western countries. (the Indian blogosphere is mentioned later). In US presidential election 2004, blogs played an important role in campaigning. Around that time blogging also started picking up in India. Today World Wide Web sees a new revolution brought by blogs.

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1.4 Micro blogging Micro blogging is a new development in the area of blogging. It is a web service that allows the subscriber to broadcast short messages to other subscribers of the service. Micro-blogging is in fact a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web. The most popular service for this is ‘twitter’ which started in 2006. Twitter enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends. Users can send and receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS (receive only), or through applications.

1.5 Indian blogosphere The blogosphere in India started taking shape around 202-03. Thereafter, the medium of blog has risen tremendously in Indian scenario. It is estimated that Indian blogosphere has around 2 million active blogs today. English undoubtedly remains the dominant language for blogging in India as well, but blogging in vernacular languages has gone up increasingly. Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi are some of the prominent languages for blogging. Around 14% of Indian netizens are blogging. Around 39% are aware about blogging and most of them read blogs. Other findings include that Indian blogosphere is dominated primarily by men, and trustworthiness of blogs etc. (MSN live survey, 2006). WatBlog.com also came up with a survey about Indian bloggers and has expressed finding on regional basis and with reference to blogs’ subject.

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Blogs are getting popular in certain sections of society at least. These sections represent the urban, internet penetrated, educated class of India. Apart from online self documentations, and online versions of personal diaries, Indian bloggers writing ranges from are social, political, economic, technological to philosophical and mystical. People have started very niche type of blogs, catering to specific interests; the readership for such is increasing. And apart from the growing readership, some efforts are being taken to promote such subject specific blogging. An award has started for Indian bloggers by the name of ‘Indibloggies’. It was its 6th year in 200809. A pune based blogger Debashish Chakraborty is the founder of this award, and these awards are given in 16 different categories, which takes into account the subject specific blogs as well as the blogs in vernacular languages. Another such effort is by the name of BlogCamp, which is an ‘Unconference’ for bloggers. It was held twice before this, and will be held in pune on 16th of May 2009. Bloggers are invited to participate in that physically or virtually, discussing the issues related to blogging and the society at large. A growing state of blogosphere and the need felt by bloggers to come together and interact could be underlined here. Unfortunately India knows the phenomenon of blogging in more negative light than positive one. There has been lot of blogging controversies till date since the medium become more popular with many sections of the society. The most famous blogging controversy is perhaps that of IIPM and blogger Gaurav Sabnis. He wrote content on his blog which put IIPM into negative light. After a long and intense fight between IIPM, Sabnis’s employer IBM and Sabnis, he was forced to leave his job. Bloggers wrote frantically about this whole issue, registering their protests and bringing forth issues like freedom of expression, which is blog’s main appeal as a medium. Recently in January, similar case happened with blogger Chautanya Kunte writing critically about NDTV reporter Barkha Dutt. NDTV sued kunte and made him do apologies and remove his post from his blog.

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Looking out of blogosphere, and speaking about society in general, common awareness about blogging has increased since celebrities started writing their own blogs. Numerous celebrities from bollywood like Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Aamir khan, Karan Johar, Shobhaa De, and currently in focus, BJP’s leader LK Advani etc are expressing themselves frequently on their blogs. Following their celebrity status, mainstream media is giving ample amount of coverage to these kinds of issue, even reporting the debates generated because of certain content on their blogs (incident of Amir naming his Dog Shahrukh). Unfortunately, News like these are hardly any good for knowing the importance of blog as a medium, but are giving blogging a certain amount of skepticism.

1.6 Blurring with mass media Although, according to latest available survey of Indian bloggers done by MSN, only 14% of Indian netizens currently blog, there are talks that blogging is blurring with journalism, or blogging definitely has citizen journalistic element in it and so on. The debate comprises many complex issues like what journalism exactly is citizen journalism, the current practice of journalism, the role of media in the society and so on. Citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information”. Though there are some obvious differences in blogging and journalism, with blogging not having a concept of gate keeping; which is of great importance in journalism. Still, blogging is said to be blurred with mass media for two reasons. Firstly, many of bloggers are performing the function of reporting events. Huge no. of bloggers is contributing to the content written on many social issues. And in certain cases, where media fails to reach, or does not give coverage to a certain incident, bloggers are performing great role in bringing about the real story in front of world. The examples of this could be seen right from the IIPM case, the Khairlanji case, the case of IAS officer Shanmugam’s murder in Bihar, and the latest 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. The issue usually gets dealt with many angles when it is discussed on blogosphere. And hence, it is said

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that more and more journalistic motives are at play with respect to blogs. In fact, In the USA the bloggers are posing a serious threat to print journalistic fraternity with its popularity. Secondly, the medium is a free one. It allows the ‘masses’ to be a part of the large communication system, from the sender’s end. Until now, masses at large always remained at the receiver’s end of a particular channel of communication. The creation and dissemination was restricted to fewer heads. As the practice of gate keeping is nonexistent, and probably there are no ideological or other restrictions on content, the free press is really used by the masses- giving it a status of mass media. The mainstream media is also taking a notice of blogging in a big way. Though in India, blogging is still in its nascent stage, and cannot probably replace journalism, prominent media houses have started looking at blogging in ‘friendly’ way. Pune’s English daily tabloid ‘Pune Mirror’ has started a column named ‘bloggers’ park’ which writes about what is happening in blogosphere at large. Many of leading print and electronic journalists are writing their own blogs. Latest example of mainstream media supporting a blog campaign is ‘the pink chuddy campaign’. It basically started as a blog campaign. Mainstream media plunged itself into it and it suddenly became a concern of whole nation, giving the campaigners the instant publicity. With these and many such issues, the nature of relationship between the existing mainstream media and the medium of blogging is becoming complex day by day. Of course, the medium of blogs is yet to progress to be truly called as mass media. Howsoever blogs might operate on a principle of free press; the reach of the medium is severely limited. In case of blogs, the access to the medium is heavily dependent on internet access. (Services like twitter are exception, but they hardly count as serious blogging) until and unless, there is widespread net penetration and net literacy, blogs could never be the ‘mass media’ of course. Though the medium of blogs is steadily on the rise and will be rising to an effective medium in coming years.

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1.7 Problems about blogs Like any other entity, blogs, though increasingly popular, are also facing certain amount of serious problem from society. 1.7.1

Defamation

This is one of the serious accusations against blogging. As there is no process of gate keeping on blogging, there is no check on what kind of content is being published through various blog. The world of User Generated Content is full of material which puts negative light on a person, place, organization etc. which leads to defamation of somebody. “The blogosphere has created an open, unfiltered megaphone for anyone with a computer and a modem, a striking characteristic of contemporary times is an unseemly incivility.” Says Robert Dilenschneider in his book ‘power and influence’. Blogging has really given a tool to the people who want to make a negative publicity of something. Defamation is largely defined as the act of making an untrue statement to a third party that damages the subject's reputation. There are several subcategories of Defamation, being Libel and Slander. Libel is Defaming in a printed forum, such as a newspaper or magazine. Slander is spoken Defamation, and could be made person-to-person, or also broadcast over a radio or television. Most of the blogging related controversies in India fall under this issue, be it IIPM case, or NDTV controversy.

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2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE

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2.1 The earlier models of communication Blogging, though yet to attain the status of mass media, is considered as a form of communication. Or more precisely Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). The concept of blogging proves to be very interesting to be examined through a point of view of traditional communications model. 2.1.1

The Shannon and weaver’s model of communication

This is one of the most basic models of communication, which reduces the process of communication structurally into discrete parts, and not only explains how communication takes place, but also why communication sometime fails. This divides the process in following parts. 1. information source: the message begins here 2. The message 3. Transmitter: through which the message flows 4. Receiver: the one who receives the message to be sent to the audience 5. Audience: whom the message finally reaches to. 6. noise: any aspect which hinders the communication process to be effective

Like all models, this is a minimalist abstraction of the reality it attempts to reproduce. The reality of most communication systems is more complex. Most information sources (and destinations) act as both sources and destinations. Transmitters, receivers, channels, signals, and even

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messages are often layered both serially and in parallel such that there are multiple signals transmitted and received. When we examine the nature of the medium of blog, we realize that blogging has made some obvious differences in the way that traditional process of communication is looked at. Firstly, the Shannon’s model is completely sender centric. It assumes that receiver is just passive entity. Blogs differ significantly in this sense, looking at there is a widespread audience who is an active consumer of the message than the passive receiver. And as stated above, it is not just one sender and receiver at a time, but thousands of individuals operate simultaneously. Also, blogs have become the content as well as the channel. That is to say, it also provides a technological digital body to the user, and also becomes the message with respect to the content written on blog. Most importantly, blogs enable the audience to comment upon the sender’s message. This interactivity provided in this process can’t be seen in Shannon’s model. Though in other models of communication, the concept of feedback is present, and here the comments are feedback given to bloggers, which enables them to be interactive.

2.1.2

The two-step flow (Katz, 1957) or the gatekeeper model Source: models of communication process, David foulger, February 2004

This model focuses on the role intermediaries play in the process of communication. Below is the diagrammatic representation.

An intermediary model

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This model of Katz stresses on the role important role played by intermediaries. In traditional media set ups, this gate keeping is usually associated with the editors. However, there are many roles where intermediaries are involved. They have ability to control the flow of message, to control what message the audience sees, or even to change the message or prevent it from reaching the audience. They can be censors, moderators, editors etc. as the message is filtered by these intermediaries, the whole process of communication is shaped is a particular way. One of the most distinguishing points of blogging is that there is absence of a gatekeeper or an intermediary. This model, which is so applicable in traditional media settings, where all media content would be controlled by gatekeeper, proves to be completely out of use when we look at blogs. Blogs by principle can be called a free press. It is highly individual centric medium, where every single person can be a sender, and have an audience without the interference of a gatekeeper. Hence, with blogging emerges a model, in which sender directly connects to audience through a medium.

2.2 The Reasons behind blogging When we consider blogging as a media, or even more profoundly, a medium, we are assuming certain things in that. We assume that blogging will is done with the intention of communicating, or transmitting messages to others through a channel, which is the blog. However, it must be noticed, that blogging is a learned concept. It does not come to humans as naturally as speaking does. And just because one of the most important uses of blogging is the ‘communication’, it is unfair to conclude that blogging is done fundamentally for communication. There can be, and there are thousands of various reasons behind why people indulge into blogging. There have been many surveys on blogosphere which ask fellow bloggers about their reasons behind d blogging. The informal range of reasons given by people there is from “they don’t know what to do in life” till “they want to unleash hitherto knowledge about the issue”. Though, on more formal level the enquiries have been fewer.

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2.2.1 Source: the Washington post, Author: frank Ehrens, 5th march 2006 In an article on ‘Washington post’ dated march 5th 2006, Frank Ehrens speaks about the survey he did on some of the reasons behind people’s blogging. He has spotted reasons like the internet strategy, real interest in some of the niche issues, reporting the issues which media is not, and also communicating with family and friends. And some have also expressed blatant truths like they want to be famous, or they feel that blogging becomes a good medium for them if they are feeling emotionally low.

2.2.2 Research paper: ‘I’m blogging this: a closer look at why people blog’ Authors: Bonnie A. Nardi, Diane J. Schiano, Michelle Gumbrecht, Luke Swartz In this, the authors took up an ethnographic investigation of blogging in a sample of such "ordinary bloggers.” 23 informants were recruited by convenient sampling and thus exhibited unsurprisingly uniform demographic structure by being well educated and middle class. They investigated blogging as a form of personal communication, with a specific interest in uncovering a range of motivations that individuals have for creating and maintaining blogs. They spotted five major motivations behind maintaining a weblog. They are: 1. Blogs as journals to record their personal lives: they document events, happenings in life on their blogs. Many of these seem ordinary, though they have their own audience who read this personal stuff. Keeping family and friends abreast of the life events is the key to this type of blogging. 2. Blogging to express their point of views: this is when a blogger gives detail point of view of his own on a topic, a commentary based post than chatter. Bloggers in their study were motivated by a desire to write their opinions and commentary on topics from art to politics to medical study.

3. Blog as catharsis: here, bloggers blog as an outlet for thoughts and feelings. Often, Bloggers turned to the blog as a welcome relief valve, a place to “get closure out of writing” or “letting off steam”, as they put it.

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4. Blogging to build community: bloggers tend to communicate with the likeminded, and this forms a community. There is a sense spotted especially in poetry bloggers, that of community. People many a times work for a community through blogs. Blogs provide interactivity, and hence the building of community is managed easily.

5. Thinking by writing: people call blog as writing by thinking. Many a times blogging forces people to think carefully and makes them organize their thoughts while writing a post. Blogging allows them to test their various ideas through writing. For bloggers who think by writing, blogging provides two vital advantages: an audience to help shape the writing and an archive of posts, some of which may be valuable in the future. Researchers conclude that there are many uses of blogging ranging from personal to community one, and as the medium explores, the versatility in these topics will be both a challenge and an opportunity for designing the blogs.

2.2.3 The uses and gratifications enquiry into bloggers motivations Source: “why do you blog” (master’s thesis), AUTHOR: Dan Li, University of Milwaukee, Madison. Here, the researcher has taken a theoretical approach to study the bloggers motivations. Usesand-gratifications approach has been acknowledged as a valuable perspective for studies on audience motivations and behaviors in the context of media users. This study explores the patterns of blogging, blogging motivations, and the roles of motivations as well as demographics as predictors for blogging behaviors. The paper discusses the U and G approach with reference to computer mediated communication (CMC) in the beginning. It explores the various types of computer mediated communication and the needs satisfied through that, which are cognitive, affective, personal interactive, social interactive, and tension release needs.

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The researcher suggests that blogging is quite different from the consumption of traditional media in a sense that it is effort consuming, and hence can’t be consumed passively, or ritualized. Blogging, as intentional media use, is “purposive and planned” (Rubin & Perse, 1987, p. 61) this research categorizes reasons for blogging in seven ways. There is adequate amount of co relation between different motivations for blog. The seven reasons are: •

Self documentation- it exhibits the function of blog as a combination of diary; notebook and a mailing list for those bloggers want to keep others posted on their up-to-date news.

•

Improving writing – this says that bloggers make full use of the instant-publishing characteristics and feedback feature to improve the impact of their writing skills. Though bloggers would expect the writing practice is more a presentation open to evaluation from readers and bloggers than merely a self indulging action.

•

Self expression- this is perhaps the most popular perceived reason behind the blogging. Researcher says that the introduction of blogs grants individuals the possibility of systematic self-presentation. On blogs, bloggers tell their own stories, discuss hobbies and interests, express opinions towards events and issues of personal interest, and present creative works. Also, the look of blogs is highly personalized according to individual style.

•

Medium appeal- it is a unique motivation. Blogging tools give very less efforts in publishing the content. The audience is widespread, unknown and potentially global, and comments can be put on, which extend into topic threads and possible community

•

Information- motivation is traced more with a perspective of information provider, than of information seeker. Though, audience feels that filter blogs, which usually give scholarly information on varied topics are good way of accessing information.

•

Passing time- this was the least approved motivation, for the simple reason that it is far less relaxing than watching television or any other media

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•

Socialization- it looks at blog as a platform to develop and maintain interpersonal relationships. The nature of internet allows bloggers to maintain online friend’s circles, as Well as building blog related communities.

In addition to this, there are several more conclusions researcher has obtained, like women have more self documentation and self expression motivations, while men seek more information. The analysis of motivations has also enabled the researcher here to predict blogging behaviors. These researches lay down a useful path for further enquiry into bloggers’ reasons and motivations behind blogging. Though, researches like these have been very few, which qualitatively dwell upon the bloggers and their blogging activity. Additionally, one major drawback of these studies is that all of them have been conducted in foreign settings, and not in India. India, where the phenomenon of blogging is still an upcoming one, and where internet penetration and internet literacy is still very low, chances are high that the reasons behind blogging could be on different lines than these studies. Though, the conceptual framework provided by these is excellent, at least to understand the reasons behind.

2.3 Blogging and journalism Wikipedia defines journalism as ‘journalism is the field concerned with producing news reports and editorials through various forms of media including newspapers, magazines, radio and television, and the Internet’. Journalists—are they writers, editors or photographers; broadcast presenters or producers—serve as the chief purveyors of information and opinion in contemporary mass society. "News is what the consensus of journalists determines it to be." Traditionally journalism is supposed to be factual, should tell the truth, and the reporting must be objective, that is without any bias. There are journalistic standards set up by the fraternity and also some ethics are to be followed while reporting. Also, most importantly there is a presence of gatekeeper in traditional journalistic settings, which is absent in blogs. Though, since some years now blogging is in talk for the possibility of it blurring line with journalism.

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2.3.1

'Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices'

Author: J D Lasica, OJR Senior Editor Source: Online journalism Review Date: 29th April 2002 As early as 2002, when blogs had just become popular in the US, the author here looks at blogging as a grass root movement that may sow the seeds of new way journalism. She predicted then that blogging will represent a new wave of amateur journalists, especially youngsters, taking on the role of columnists, reporters and editors. This tendency will increase we web 2.0 comes and multimedia and broadband have higher reach.

2.3.2

Why journalists must learn the values of blogging,

Author: Roy Greenslade Source: the guardian Date: June 2008 In this article, the author explains the basic differences between the values that journalism has and that blogging has. Traditionally, news is one way traffic, the newspapers and editors decided what information’s should be given to public and many journalists still hold onto this notion, which blog completely defies. Author defines it as "various voices interacting with each other" Author has taken a bit of Marxist perspective in explaining the changing media sociology due to blogging. It says when traditional media set up grows; it just means the growth of the big industrial houses or the media owners. Now the digital revolution could possible challenge the power of media moguls. Blogging, being a community strategy, threatens the established order of journalism, because blogging is the publishing process for bloggers, and not a conversation. Journalists, have always wished to see themselves class apart, but there is soon going to be integration between bloggers and journalists in order of publishing, erasing the line between 'us' and 'them'.

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2.3.3

Bloggers’ rubbish

Author: Shobhan Saxena Source: Times news network Date: 1st October 2006 Not very long ago, one of the most eminent media groups in India, the times group published a story which heavily criticized bloggers and the kind of writing gets published on WWW. It says that bloggers' claims of giving the voice to the voiceless is apocalyptic and their tones are acidic. Also, their claims of replacing newspapers with their journalism are highly idiotic. It says that journalism is a very serious business, which involves seeking true stories, reporting the facts in any situation whatsoever. Most of the bloggers, claiming that they are into journalism obtain the stories and subjects from the Google and other media, publishing the heavily opinion colored posts on their blogs. It also voices a serious concern that web media has no audit and no gate keeping. In this scenario, howsoever would bloggers cry that they are the citizen generated media; it is very difficult to know what the controlling forces behind these versions of "truth” are. It says that in some western countries people are doing good works on blogs by publishing stories which are missed by the mainstream media. But in India, author says, that journalism without an editorial process is very danger

2.3.4

Exchange4media News Service

Date: November 28, 2006

This article is about the findings of the MSN windows live survey of Indian blogosphere in 2006. One of the findings says that Indian bloggers read the blogs to be informed about the happenings in world to the large extent. And around 45% of respondents believed that blogs content could be as trustworthy as traditional media.

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2.3.5

Online news credibility- an examination of perception of newspaper journalists

Author: William p. Cassidy Source: Journal of computer mediated communication Date: December 2007

This research paper doesn’t really dwell upon blogs specifically, but speaks about the general online news. It examines the perceptions of journalists about the credibility of the online news. All over the world, internet didn’t use to be perceived as a very credible medium, when it came to trust a particular news or information. This study examines perceptions in USA journalists. The sample for this study was around 2000 American mainstream English language newspaper journalists as well as around 1200 online journalists. Journalists are defined here as “those who have the responsibility of preparation or transmission of stories or other information” (weaver and wilhoit, 1996) the study provides insight on the changing role of journalists in the online environment and their acceptance of internet as a source of news information. Also, there was finding that the online news, which is found on the websites of established traditional media persons, is found to be more credible. Though, it suggests that the online news is viewed as less credible by traditional newspaper journalists. This might be because, the online news scenario challenges one of the fundamental ‘truths’ in journalism that the journalist is supposed to be the ‘gatekeeper’ and he decides what information should the public consume. This might make the print journalists disregard the reader-authored content. The circulation of newspapers n the US is definitely decreasing, and lesser no of young people read th newspaper as a source of information. Also, the credibility of mainstream news media is decreasing constantly in the western countries. In their book, 'blog!' David Kline and Dan Burstein sight the results of Gallup poll in 2005, where only 44% citizens of US trust the mainstream media to accurately report the news. The rest think that media is heavily biased in reporting the news.(page 239-40). However, the authors opine that it would be mistake to write off mainstream media just now. They still enjoy large audience and advertising all over the world. Also, the traditional media has

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demonstrated in the past that it could adjust with the new developments in technology. So the power of mainstream media could be challenged, but they are definitely not thwarted, These articles were intended to represent the various takes of various sections of society on the medium of blog. Two major points of views could be seen in these articles. One is the stream of strongly advocating the blogs-journalism blur line of thought. According to them, the alternative voices are heard through blogs, which do not feature into the mainstream media and also, the voiceless section of society has got the voice. The opposite line of thought claims due to absence of gatekeepers, blogs could not count as journalism, and many a times their writing is strong and opinion based. To talk about Indian scene about bloggers and journalists, situation is still in favor of journalists, simply because blogs are not a very widely known medium, and hence can’t be called as a mass media. Though many Indian bloggers are responding to various situations in the same way as journalists do like 26/11 terror attacks, by writing information updates, posting photos and publishing full length articles about the terror attacks. (Economic times, 28th November 2008). and even many Indian journalists now write a blog of their own, which shows they are adapting to the new medium and the challenges posed by that.

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3. THE AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

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3.1 Aim To study young Indian urban bloggers with respect to their blogging activity and the psychosocial aspects influencing it.

3.2 Objectives 3.2.1

To study the blogging behaviour of these bloggers.

This objective seeks to understand their frequency of blogging, the topics written about, the nature of interactivity, micro blogging and the opinions about it etc 3.2.2

To understand their motivations behind blogging

This objective will try to see what are different motives and needs behind blogging and other things influencing their blogging. 3.2.3

To analyze the bloggers as members of real and the virtual society and find out the

relation between these societies and their blogging This objective will try to probe on their real and virtual selves, study what kind of social processes take place in virtual world, about the effects of blogging on real society, and society’s reaction to blogging etc.

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4. METHODOLOGY

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4.1 Research method The method used here is qualitative in nature. Researcher intended to generate primary data and also, findings of this research are not intended to be generalized to large population. Though First objective could be achieved only be surveying blogs itself and one doesn’t need to go in depth of bloggers per say, to attain second and third objective, probing the sample to maximum level possible was necessary. Research method of in-depth interview was adapted here.

4.2 Sampling Bloggers have a wide spectrum. There are various types of bloggers from celebrities to professional ones. Although, the bloggers studied here are the faceless ones, not falling in any of identifiable categories like corporate bloggers, celebrity bloggers. Money earning bloggers etc. Research population comprised bloggers selected on following criteria: •

Should be between 18-40 years of age

•

Should be an Indian national, living in Indian urban area

Sample was selected by convenient sampling method. However, fair representation on the basis of age, sex, occupation was ensured.

4.3 Sample size Sample size taken here was 20.

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5. ANALYSIS

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The respondents of study Following diagrams are to represent the sample for this study in as many ways as possible. As it is a qualitative research, the nature of sample pl plays ays an important role in the findings, and in fact the findings have to be understood iin the light of the sample for research.

1. Age- wise representation of respondents

No.of Respondents 12 10 8 6 No.of Respondents

4 2 0 18-25

25-32

32-40

As seen in the bar diagram, most respondents fell into the age group of 18 18-25 years, 25-32 25 were lesser, and 32-40 were the least.

2. Gender-wise wise representation of respondents

female Male

As seen above, the gender representation was exactly same for both males and females. Men and women were interviewed 10 each.

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3. Occupation wise representation 10 8 6 4

Series1

2 0 students

self employed

job

4. 4. Area of work or study 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 TECHNOLOGY

MEDIA

SOCIAL SCIENCES

BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

OTHER

The primary data generated through all the in depth interviews was analyzed with reference to the objectives of this research. Various issues, which seem to be important in order to study bloggers, were identified. The analysis of the data by each issue is as follows:

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5.1 The range of topics The respondents were asked here about the topics that they write about. It can be seen from their answers that most of them write about their personal opinions, experiences, vies, incidences happened in their lives and their commentary, or even the incidences taking place in the society around, and their take on it. It could range from their personal likings like a particular book or film, to the happenings in environment around, like the traffic in the city to the events with larger magnitude and deep impact like the 26/ 11 terror attacks. There were few niche bloggers in this sample. All of them stated that they write posts only related to that particular issue, saying they either had an in-depth knowledge on that subject or a strong passion about it. There were no strong gender differences found in the selection of topics. This is different from the popular notion that men usually write about the society around, while women tend to write about the personal topics. Both men and women had touched upon both these categories of subjects on their blogs at various times. Though on the closer look, it was observed that male sample wrote less about their personal lives, but took an issue and usually commented upon it. Whereas few female samples were found to be occasionally writing content close to their heart, or the personal details of lives.

5.2 The interactivity Interactivity is one of the special features of the new media- the internet. The blogosphere is no exception to it. Blogs by its own structure are interactive. The readers can interact with the blogger author in form of posting comments on the blog. Posting comments and generating threads of discussion is a common phenomenon at any blog. It was tried here to find out the nature of interactivity here in the respondents. The interactivity could be seen in three ways in these bloggers

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1. The discussion on blogs: as the comments get posted on the blog, bloggers reply to them then and there or they go to the readers’ blogs and post the comment. Many a times it generates a discussion on that topic between the author and the readers. The audience here can give feedback promptly, and the sender takes that feedback into consideration and responds to it. If the readership is wide, and the readers are unknown, this was the form of interaction used by many bloggers here.

2. Discussion on internet outside blogs: posting comments on blogs and replying there is not the only way in which the interaction takes place. Bloggers have their email addresses on the blogs, and all bloggers here operate with their real identity on blogs. In this case, the interaction with the readers is done through various other online means like emailing, online chatting and social networking. Though no blogger said that they interact with a reader on the mail or instant messenger for the first time. The other means of continuing discussions are used when there is a bit more familiarity towards the reader. Also, the nature of the interaction becomes one to one here, from the many to many on a blogging thread. 3. Real interaction, along with the virtual: this was reported by almost half of the respondents here, that many a times the bloggers do actually meet their readers and other fellow bloggers. This was reported by two types of respondents though I.

The niche bloggers: the niche bloggers in this sample have a wide audience base. And it is a niche readership as well. The audience they get also has knowledge or interest in that particular topic. And hence the nature of comments that get posted on their blogs is also information-centric. These niche bloggers interact with lot of their readers using not only both the above ways but also meet some of them. The respondents here claim that it is mainly the passion in that niche topic which makes them meet the fellow bloggers who share the similar interest. Sometimes special interest groups get formed due to this, and the interaction becomes regular and more.

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II.

The ‘heavy users’: just like any other thing, there are heavy users and light users of the blog. In this sample as well, a couple of heavy users were found, who blog very regularly, have a huge readership, and have been blogging since the early days of blogs. They intend to meet the readers and interact with them as well. They attend lot of blogger’s meets which take place.

Some of the bloggers in the sample cited a very interesting reason for that, saying “as the readership of your blog grows, you are never satisfied with the no of people you interact. You want to have more people in your blogging loop, more interaction, and more discussion. That makes us go out and actually interact with the readers.” In the real interaction, it is not just bloggers’ meets, but some bloggers interact one to one in real meets as well. And the percentage of the blog meets is pretty thin, but at least there is a point seen where not just the virtual but the real selves of bloggers meet.

5.3 Blog over mail In the ROL, one of the brought out motives behind blogging is communicating with friends. In the online world, e-mailing, instant messaging, and social networking sites etc are one of the most popular means of communication. Like the blog, the structure of email also enables the writer to write freely in the space given, and send it to other people, so that the content is read by people and commented on, thereby the communication taking place. Respondents were asked what is the special appeal in blog that they prefer blog over e mail. Some of the representative responses include: •

you can reach people whom you don’t know

•

What is the guarantee that the mail is read? It goes to spam too!

•

I don’t know whether a particular person is interested in reading the stuff I write. And he has every right not to read the writing.

•

Sending the mail is like forcing the person to read what I have written. Who am I to intrude the privacy of that person?

•

Blogging ‘feels’ your ‘own’. Mail somehow does not.

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From the reasons cited by respondents, following things are pretty clear. •

The sense of ownership felt in blog: many people actually feel that the virtual space a blog provides to write is owned by them. In mail, it does not use the software which is unique to the individual nor can he customize the mail settings. The newer advances in blogging software enable the blogger to customize the name, the look, the operation and the overall functioning of the blog according to one’s own choice. This gives a strange sense of actually “owning” a virtual space.

•

Bloggers intend widespread audience: even if one’s only motive behind blogging is letting others know one’s thoughts, bloggers prefer blogging because of simple fact that it gives them a more no of audience than simple mail. A mail reaches only selected people in the mailing list, where as the blog is there permanently and there is possibility that blog would gain many more readers than the restricted and the known ones.

•

Mail is encroaching and enforcing! : bloggers express a strange point of view that the e mail is encroaching on the respondents’ freedom to read and it looks pretty enforcing to ask them to read. With blog, there is nothing like this as the blog is “just there”. Person goes to the blog by own choice, and hence such readers are more valued by bloggers and the post also makes greater impact on such readers, claim the bloggers.

5.4 Twitter There have been strong advocates of twitter as well as critics. Most of the comments made n the basis of current state of twitter or the use people put it to. Currently, 90% of tweets are used as status messages which are put on face book or the instant messengers. It was reported that it gets very disturbing and is completely unnecessary that you receive the constant updates of what people are doing in the entire day. It is very self indulgent and “why would you want to let people know about the happenings in each minute”, was the question put by the critics.

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Another shade of negative opinion was brought out by a respondent saying that one always wants to show a different face to the world than what one really is. And hence, people use twitter is such a way that would project the ‘cool’ side of their personality to the world outside. (This was found to be an interesting opinion. The “projection of image” will be dealt with later with the concept of reactivity.) On the contrary, the advocates of twitter came up with long list of reasons to support the use of twitter. •

Twitter allows only 140 characters in one message and hence one has to be very precise. In normal blog post there in no constraint of space and hence, many a times the writing does not get a polished one, but vague and pointless

•

.many more people can use it as it need lesser time, and can be done through the mobile. The user base can be bigger than the normal blog post.

•

Blogging is not allowed at my workplace, but through tweeting, I can stay connected to the world outside and know what 100 different people are saying.

•

It is instant; you don’t have to wait for a long time to put your experiences into words. You share it just as and when an incident happens.

•

It creates a good space for those topics which don’t deserve a full length post.

•

A respondent shares some links which he thinks are worth sharing with people and they will be benefited by these links. That is the reason he claims that he is getting so many followers! So motive of sharing edited information also is seen there.

Hence, twitter for the bloggers represents values at various places along the continuum of usefulness. One end is the strong criticism where bloggers reporting nuisance value, with discouraging the idea as foolish and self indulgent. On the other end, twitter is praised and used regularly by many people, and they Report twitter as precise, instant, accessible without net and useful for sharing purposes. A pattern of using twitter has been observed in this research. The respondents could be grouped in two categories. First group is of the “heavy users” of blogs, while the other is of ‘light users’.

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(This terminology is prevalent in the field of advertising, describing the nature of one’s use of a product). The light users of blog here do not use twitter at all. These users: •

do not post on blog more than thrice a month

•

Their motives behind blogging mostly fall under the categories self expression, peer influence, love for writing, medium appeal etc.

•

Do not have many followers, and most of the followers or subscribers to blog are known to them.

This group expressed opinions, which were slightly on the negative side. Twitter was perceived as a source of creating nuisance and unnecessary disturbance in routine. Whereas the heavy users of blog use twitter very regularly, and these users: •

Post blogs very regularly, around 10-12 posts a month

•

Their blogging reasons were in the categories of self expression, passion about the subject, communication, socialization, information

•

The followers or subscribers these bloggers had were big in no. s few bloggers had subscribers close to 1000. All these subscribers were not acquaintances; many unknown followers have their blogs gained.

•

All niche bloggers fit into this category

This group expressed great interest and fascination about the idea of micro blogging. All of them use twitter regularly and cited various reasons for expressing the appeal twitter has. And in addition to other peripheral reasons, the main appeal for all these could be termed as the quick and instant access to the virtual world that twitter provided from any place.

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5.5 The Motivation behind blogging Finding about the reasons behind blogging and looking at how do the bloggers ‘use’ this medium was an important objective of this research. After intensive analysis of in depth interviews, following things emerged as the reasons behind blogging. This can be called as motivation behind blogging, motivation being a set of reasons which determines one to engage in particular behavior. •

Self expression: as expected, this was found to be the most commonly seen motivation behind indulging into blogging. The popular idea behind blog is also the medium for self expression as well. The structural advantages of blogs make it a very appealing medium for self expression. There are no gatekeepers, and hence the expression is just as the person wants, not edited. Also, blogging enables person to keep the identity protected. Hence the chances that the bloggers expresses more freely are more.

•

Love for writing: this was second most common reason or motivation to start a blog. “I like to write, and the medium was just there” was a very common response by most of the respondents. In spite of photo blogging and podcasting, words still remain the main content of most of the blogs, and main mean of expression overall. Except one respondent, who does only photo blogging, all other bloggers have text as main content on blogs. Some respondents also expressed that blogging enabled them practice and improve their writing, because of its structure.

•

Peer influence- not many bloggers directly cited this reason for starting the blog. Though it was represented somewhere in their answers. For ex. A respondent said” I started blog to write, as I love writing. Also, all my friends who love to write have their own blogs. So I thought why not i?” Here, the two reasons namely the love for writing and the peer influence are mixed. Statements like “it is a fashion here on campus” or “my colleagues in media also use it to express their true opinions” show evidence that there exists a peer influence. Peer pressure is one of the strong motivations for any social behavior.

•

Information sharing/seeking – this was seen in very regular and active bloggers. These bloggers were observed to have expertise or interest in a particular topic, and hence they

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want to share the information or knowledge with the online world, by writing blogs. All niche bloggers here have expressed this motivation. Also, as they might look at various other blogs with similar set of mind, as a source of information. The information seeking motive is seen in reading other’s blogs. The group of people who would attach moderate amount of credibility to blogs tends to have this motive as well, even though they are not niche bloggers. •

Socialization- this motivation was not directly expressed as a ‘reason to blog’ by many bloggers. Only few bloggers opined that they write blogs so that they can socialize with other members on blogosphere.

Though, many of them expressed the evidences of virtual

socialization they do through their blogs. “I get to interact with many unknown bloggers through my blog” or “many of my friends live abroad, so blogging becomes a good way to discuss on a certain issue” were grouped under the motivation of socialization. Though, for all the respondents, blog is a lesser popular mean of socialization. Online chats, emails and social networking sites are used more. •

Self documentation- this was the least expressed motivation for blogging. Only two bloggers told that they earlier used to write blogs to keep a track of their thoughts, the interesting incidences etc. these respondents blog about personal thoughts and opinions. This reason was seen to be proportionate with blogger’s use of blog as more or less personal diary.

The motivation of passing time is absent here. Probably because all the respondents interviewed here do have other pre occupations. Blogging is unlike other media which could be consumed passively. It takes up lot of time, energy and thoughts. And hence, as a pastime activity, blogging was not at all seen.

The representative statements were grouped into these motivations. The table of this follows No.

Statements made by respondents

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1.

•

I want to express my opinions

•

I like making my opinions heard, it’s a good medium Self expression to do that

• 2.

•

I love writing and blog provides an open space for Love for writing

me to write •

I like to write, and I can practice my writing on blogs

•

Blogs provide me a platform for sharpening my writing

3

•

All my friends were doing it

•

Cool people around me do that, I thought it’s a way Peer influence to keep updated with the trend

4

•

I read a lot and gather information, wanted to share it Information

with other people •

I have a deep passion/ interest for this subject; I felt I seeking/sharing should write about it.

5 •

Many of my friends stay abroad, its good way to Socialization discuss things with them

•

I get to interact with many unknown readers and Subscribers

6

•

When I see an interesting incidence I feel like Self documentation documenting it somewhere

•

I should keep a track of my thoughts somewhere, so that I can refer back to them

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5.6 The needs behind the motivation Any motivation which directs a behavior by humans originates from the underlying needs of that individual. The blogging behavior should also be no exception to it. The needs of an individual behind using a particular medium need not necessarily be connected to that particular medium. The general natural instincts of humans could also create the needs, the motivations and then drive the behavior. Needs usually function is cycle. A need existing motivates an individual. The motivated individual then indulges in certain action and attains certain goal. The attainment of a certain goal does not become the end, a different need is created with the attainment of that goal, and the cycle usually continues.

NEED EXISTS

MOTIVATES INDIVIDUAL

ACTION/ BEHAVIOUR

ATTAINMENT OF CERTAIN GOAL

NEW NEED CREATED

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In this case, when bloggers express a particular opinion about use of blogs, or cite a reason, there were some underlying needs found behind that. Sometimes the bloggers themselves told about these needs, otherwise a particular statement was believed to throw light on the needs of that individual. Figuring out what the needs are is not always direct. Bunch of answers to various questions does also show evidences of existence of a particular need. Some of the needs understood after analyses were: •

The need for attention: this could be an underlying need for many of the blogging behaviours. Most of the overt social behavior by individual is affected by this need of seeking attention. And though attention seeking syndrome is not considered as a socially desirable behavior in many social settings, there is large amount of attention seeking in any medium. Every individual, if not apathetic and loner, strives for attention from society in some or the other way. Bloggers are no exceptions to this. They strive for getting fair amount of attention in their

virtual world. The reactivity mentioned prior, does play a great role here, on the positive note. Just like Bloggers apprehend from writing about personal details, they many a times choose a fairly attention seeking way to blog. This hidden need is seen in many ways like naming the blog in unique way, striving for the growth in readership and various techniques of that, till selecting very unique topics to write about with a specific target audience- Niche blogging. The answers to the question about the specific appeal in blogging bring out interesting answers. They look at blog as a medium to get noticed in certain section of society, but without criticism, they blog about the stuff they want to write and do not mail, because blogs brings unrestricted readership and hence they ‘grow’. Many times bloggers visit some other blogs and write comments, so that people will visit their blog in turn, and they will get noticed. The desire to get ‘noticed’ by a large no of audiences, the desire to grow readership, to be ‘known’ brings out the very basic human need- the need for attention Blogs enable the writer to protect his or her identity. The writer could communicate with society, or just use the blog as cathartic medium without being ‘known’ to society. although all of the bloggers interviewed here do not operate with their identities protected. A straight reason

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as cited by one of the respondents can be valid- “of course we want attention from other members on internet. Why would we blog otherwise in the first place?” Of course, the attention they get is from the virtual society. Though some of the bloggers have been known in the real society as well. Either it is because of the meeting points of real and virtual societies- the blog awards, blog meets etc. or because of controversies that their blogs created. •

The need for sharing: this need’s presence was also seen to certain extent in various answers given by the respondents. It is a basic necessity of humans as well. One needs to share one’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings etc. for this humans use various ways like personal relationships, peer groups, and writing about their feelings.

•

Social inclusion: this need’s presence was not as largely visible as the need for attention. Though responses like “all my friends do it, so I am doing it”, or “I blog to stay connected with my friends abroad” indicate an inclination to feel ‘included’ within selected group of individuals. It is again a very basic need to feel “included” in the society. As expected, the motivations of “peer influence” and “socialization” seem to be positively connected with this need of social inclusion.

5.7 Reactivity This is a concept originated in psychology. The meaning of reactivity cited by Wikipedia is that it is a phenomenon that occurs when individuals alter their performance or behavior due to the awareness that they are being observed. (Heppner, P.P., Wampold, B.E., & Kivlighan, D.M. (2008). Research Design in Counseling (3rd ed.). Thomson. pp. 331) This change in the behaviour may either be positive or negative. In this context, we are applying this concept to the blogging behaviour of respondents. Blogging is an open and free place to write. And though there are no gatekeepers there, a huge no. of possible audiences all over the world exists for a particular blog. The writing is open for all of them. Now could the blogging behaviour bear some effects of this concept of open space writing and probable existence of readers?

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With context to this research, it does. Almost 95% of respondents agreed that their behaviour changes in many ways when they write a blog post. The difference between their blogs and the personal diary was asked to the respondents. The answers also suggest that there is certain concept of reactivity at play, with answers like “I am a very private person” or “why would I bore the readers with my personal musings” this might defy the popular concept of blogging being the free journal, and online version of personal diaries, and people putting their hearts out on their blogs. It is largely a west-dominated concept, though. The responses quite clearly show that bloggers are aware that blog perhaps is not the best medium to “pour their hearts out”. The hesitance to write personal blog posts has many contours to it. It is not only the hesitance in disclosing own personal details in the masses, it is also the hesitance in attaching the “selfimage” to the kind of content published. There exists a subtle difference between these two, and which was brought out by an answer given by a long-time blogger. This blogger used to blog anonymously, with the identity protected from everybody. Her blog used to have lot of extremely personal content written on it. But somehow, with the technological advancements and the virtual social interactions, her anonymity became lesser. The moment bunch of people knew about her real identity, she deleted all the blog posts, and now restricts herself to certain extent while writing about personal details. Secondly, in continuation with the issue of “association of self image with the quality of content” and an interesting statement made by a respondent about twitter (I feel using twitter, you want to show a different face to the world outside), we could say that the same “projection of personality” functions here. On the blogosphere, the only way to know about somebody is through the blogger’s writing. Many bloggers within the sample enjoyed considerable no. of audiences, and hence, their writing, as they claim, changes according to their perceptions of their readers’ expectations. They definitely want to show the ‘brighter side’ of their personality. Following are the various statements which underline the strong possibility that there exists tendency to project the brighter side of their personality.

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•

“I improved grammar, formatting styles.Keeping in mind that i have an audience which is reading.”

•

“You wouldn’t want people to form incorrect opinions about you by reading the personal posts etc.”

•

“I would open up about my personal details to the extent that I would be comfortable with.”

•

“I have considerable no of audience now, and with greater readership, comes greater responsibility that you consider your audience before you send the content to them.”

While interacting socially, may it be real or virtual; humans always try to gauge the other person. Unlike the real social interaction, virtual social interaction permits you to judge a person only on the basis of his writing, or the identity he has decided to assume. On the blogosphere, the blog post becomes the only way for the unknown readers to know about their personality; hence bloggers are always conscious that they write in such a way that would display a ‘better’ side of them. The inferences about the reactivity of niche bloggers are somewhat different. All the niche bloggers included in the sample, except one, write about the facts. The other one writes about movie reviews, which has a wide scope for the opinions to come into picture. .the information based niche bloggers tend to worry about the truth value of their content. According to them, they have got a wide readership, and hence the content they put on blogs, has to be accurate. Many of their readers are very knowledgeable about the topic. If there are some factual errors, there are chances that the knowledgeable audience will criticize their writing or it will lead to some debate. Also, they admit to think about what kind of content will the audience find useful, and then they sometimes write a post on that. And hence, the kind of audience they already and will have makes great impact on the niche bloggers writing, although in a different way- in terms of the ‘truth value’ and the ‘interest value’ of the content they deliver to their audience. The inferences about the reactivity of niche bloggers are somewhat different. All the niche bloggers included in the sample, except one, write about the facts. The other one writes about movie reviews, which has a wide scope for the opinions to come into picture.

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The information based niche bloggers tend to worry about the truth value of their content. According to them, they have got a wide readership, and hence the content they put on blogs, has to be accurate. Many of their readers are very knowledgeable about the topic. If there are some factual errors, there are chances that the knowledgeable audience will criticize their writing or it will lead to some debate. Also, they admit to think about what kind of content will the audience find useful, and then they sometimes write a post on that. And hence, the kind of audience they already and will have makes great impact on the niche bloggers writing, although in a different way- in terms of the ‘truth value’ and the ‘interest value’ of the content they deliver to their audience.

5.8 Being a sender in the communication process A sender is an essential pre requisite for any communication to take place. Sender of a message or the information source is where the process of communication starts. Shannon and weaver’s model is a sender centric one, giving lot of authority to the sender. It recognizes audience as the passive receiver of the message and not the active consumer. In reality however, the process does not work that way as we all know. In any communication, receiver plays an equally important role as the sender, by giving feedback, thereby generating a new line of communication and continuing the process. Any interpersonal communication is done in this way. However, traditionally mass media worked more or less like this model. Newspapers or radio or television, every medium worked in a largely sender centric way. The audience to these media remained as the passive receivers of messages to great degree. It’s passive in a way that there was a lack of feedback of any sorts. The interactivity was absent in all mainstream media until now. Letters to the editor or the requests to the radio station can be considered as feedback, but it was not instant, nor was any interactivity generated. The players in the field of media were also very less in numbers. Due to all this, traditional mainstream media used to enjoy an authority of being a sender of a message. Media used to decide what message should be sent to the passive recipients through the process of communication. The power that media held was largely this power of ‘being a sender’.

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With blogs, the whole process of communication has undergone a tremendous change. Two major changes happened with this new medium. With the rise of new technologies and its convergence, (mobile blogging, GPS on phone, IPTV etc) an instant feedback is guaranteed. The audience is considered as ‘active consumers’ of message and not the passive receivers. Second and most important change is that there is no limit to the number of senders existing. Everybody can now become a sender, which makes the flow of communication completely different. There are many senders and their many audiences. In this scenario, the power and the authority a ‘sender’ used to enjoy are bound to suffer. The respondents were asked whether there is any feeling of ‘sender’ that they enjoy, or do they feel that ‘authority’ of being a sender on the blogosphere. The respondents here perceived the power of being a sender in two ways: •

The independence of being ‘sender’, bypassing the mainstream media: As discussed above, the authority associated with being a sender was always enjoyed by the traditional mainstream media. Blogs enable the common man to become a sender. Hence, there is a feeling expressed by bloggers that being able to send message to certain audience, bypassing the traditional media, gives them a sense of power of being a ‘sender. The authority to decide the message content, the message structure and the audience is something that blogs give them, and hence there is also a sense of independence perceived by bloggers.

•

Having large no. of audiences makes you sender: this was the feeling expressed by most of the bloggers. If a particular blogger has considerable amount of readership, he or she will definitely be in a position to have that authority of sender. For having a power of sender, a presence of audience is extremely necessary, opine the respondents. For popular bloggers like Amit Verma on ‘India Uncut’, the audience base is very large. There are thousands of readers for his every post- for every message he creates and sends. The consumption of that message is active, and the feedback is instant, which also generates different small communication processes.

Though the tendency of deciding what messages should be communicated and what the audience should consume is not seen in bloggers, the similar pattern of ‘power’ is seen here as traditional media. If a particular print publication has a wide circulation or readership, that publication is

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seen as a powerful publication. If a television channel fetches higher TRP rankings, the channel is supposed to be at the ‘top’ and hence they exert lot of power in the media world. Similarly, if a blog has a readership in thousands, he is considered to be a ‘powerful’ sender. Of course, the bloggers with the sender’s power do have a realization that there is no unidirectional exertion of power, as interactivity enables the audience to comment, and not let the powerful blogger abuse his power. Some bloggers here, particularly niche bloggers expressed a slight variation in this. Many of the respondents here had a good readership, and the kind of focused audience they get on their blogs gives them a sense of being a sender. Creating and disseminating the information specific to a subject to the focused audience gives them a feeling of authority, they feel the communication to be more concentrated, and the focused discussion generated through this is welcome for these bloggers. Though, why and how exactly do they feel this way was not answered by these niche bloggers. This flow of communication is unlike ‘mass’ media, where the dissemination of content is aimed at the heterogeneous and widespread audience.

5.9 Credibility of bloggers

The thoughts of the respondents are categorized here in three ways. 1. They are firm that blogs are opinions and not facts, and hence they can’t be trusted. They wouldn’t personally trust a blog. 2. The other take was that you could very well trust a blog, given that it has certain authority and the power in the blogosphere. There are checking mechanisms for the issue of blog credibility and one has to apply those while trusting a blog 3. This group was not ready to trust the traditional media as well. According to them, the traditional media just can’t be trusted as there are economic motives and equations at play in the kind of reporting they do. They would probably trust a blogger than they would trust a journalist because till now there are no economic equations coming into their reporting, and most of the times they write the content which is not covered by traditional media.

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Taking a close look at the first group of bloggers who said that blogs are opinions and not facts, hence they can’t be trusted, we would see that •

All of these bloggers themselves blog about their personal experiences, their views and opinions about certain incidence or fact. There are no niche bloggers involved here who write about technology or science or any specific subject.

•

Their reasons behind starting and continuing blogging fall into the categories like self expression, the medium appeal and the peer influence.

•

The followers or the subscribers they have are many a times the known ones, friends or acquaintances. The nature of the comments they receive is either praising or expressing their contradictory point of view about certain things.

These factors would indeed help in forming the opinion which mostly denies blogs’ use as source of information, looking at the fact that they do not personally write information or fact based content on their blogs, nor information about various subjects is the motive behind starting a blog. Similar analysis of the second group of respondents would bring out the facts that: •

These bloggers usually blog about the happenings in the society around them, but in little lesser personal way, and it would have more fact base, rather than opinions or experiences. The topics covered by them were usually politics, economy, current happenings like elections, culture etc. where essentially a fact was taken as a base and then an analysis was put forth.

•

The reasons and motivations found were more in the category of improving writing skills, medium appeal and self expression

•

The kind of comments which they get on posts are, not the personal ones, but relevant to subject, which often generate a thread or an online discussion about that specific phenomenon.

They do themselves follow some or the other blogs which are very

informative in some specific areas, or the ones which are popular in the number of followers on the blogosphere.

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These respondents are comparatively more active as the members of blogging world. They consume information through the World Wide Web, and are ready to trust a blog as a source of information on certain checks. If a particular blog has huge no. of following, chances are more that they would trust what is written there, as they assume that it is written responsibly and is based on reliable sources. This group of bloggers also cites examples of incidences in the blog world where some incidences of flaming or plagiarism were reported by other bloggers. This is cited by them as a mechanism of keeping a check on what sort of content is getting written and how credible would that be. The concept of ‘power’ expressed by these bloggers is an interesting one, which was dealt more within the chapter “being a sender” The similar scrutiny of the third group which says that they would not trust even the traditional media brings out following results: •

This group comprises mostly niche bloggers or the bloggers whose most of the content is usually written is some specific areas. In the sample here, the subjects of niche bloggers were science, technology, cinema, politics etc. most of the topics in science and technology are only fact based. The posts are written with taking a fact and explaining it fully to the niche audience that they have.

•

Their motivation and reasons behind blogging mostly fall in the category of information, socialization and the medium appeal. The information reason means here both seeking and sharing information. This also has a shade of socialization, where you would have definite audience base, and the virtual social interactions take place largely.

•

The nature of comments that they receive is interesting in the sense that many of the comments are not only praising but also information-seeking, requesting them to write on specific issues, and adding to the existing thread of knowledge.

The reason they cite behind not trusting the traditional media is that traditional media does not do enough or accurate reporting of facts in some specific subject. In does not write very clear articles or news on these issue, and the media opinion according to them, is often biased by the thoughts of the media owner.

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Of course, they accept that false information could be reported on very fact-centric and niche blogs as well. But they think that readers should apply the mechanisms of checking the blogs. They also opine that blogs could be more credible than traditional media because there are no economic motives involved, and hence fewer barriers are there in presenting the truth before the world. This tendency is seen increasingly in the bloggers on the western countries. It is largely felt that the kind of reporting done by the press and television is not up to the mark, and hence people are finding it less and less credible. Evidences show that even the readership of many large giant print publications is decreasing. The similar opinion was expressed by one of the respondents, saying that the credibility of television channels in India is decreasing with the urban educated internet savy class.

5.10 Blog and media Blogs have been talks for quite a while now for the opinion that they are blurring with the mainstream media. It’s an ‘in thing’ to say that bloggers are in fact journalists, having different form, or the citizen journalistic motives are chipping into blogosphere. In the United States, readership of newspapers is decreasing (Gallup poll, 2006) and blogs are becoming a more and more popular source for news and information. Though, India shows different scene. Blogs is still a Greek and Latin concept to most of the Indians, let alone refereeing to it as a source of news. Though the talks of blogging is equal to journalism has two reasons behind it, as discussed in the introduction already. One is that many bloggers are reporting about various issues of social interest like the journalists. Secondly, the medium of blogs is free, and provides an open space to write without any restrictions. Hence, it has potential to become a true ‘mass’ media, giving an opportunity to masses to be the sender of communication process. Still, it does not mean the end of mass media. There is this popular notion roaming around in the countries where blogosphere is very strong, (ex. USA) that blogs are going to bring about the death of the mainstream media. A cartoon published in the comic strip ‘pearls before swine’ in

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2005, tries to take a futuristic peep at this popular notion, where the death of mainstream media is predicted. India does not seem to have a similar case. The print publications are still going strong and not many look at blogs as their main source of news. Still, Indian blogosphere has started coming up with similar questions about blogs as a medium and blogs replacing journalism. This research tries to see how urban Indian bloggers try to see themselves in context to media, journalism and what their opinions are about the relationship between contemporary media and blogosphere. The inferences about the blogs and media will be divided in various sub topics as the issue is very vast. 5.10.1 Being media All of the respondents here were aware about the popular notion of bloggers showing citizen journalistic motives, and blogging is journalism. Whether they feel that they are acting as journalists or writing with journalistic intentions remains a key question though. Looking at the answers the bloggers gave here about their reasons, motivations to blog, and the opinions they expressed about the bloggers being journalists, it is deduced here that majority of bloggers do not consider themselves as any forms of journalists or writing with any citizen journalistic motives in mind. Before elaborating upon their negative answer to being journalists, one has to examine their concept of ‘journalism’ or ‘media’ Most of the respondents thought about journalism in a way that has both traditional journalistic values and modern day journalism. Journalism for them largely is: •

Investigating various incidents an writing reports about it

•

Performing a function of watchdog of the society

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Giving people what they want to read or see

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Giving objective report of a particular happening, without letting the biases in

According to the respondents, the kind of blogging they do does not fit into this pre conceived notion of media that they have. Most of the bloggers don’t think that they write about a specific issue which will interest lot of public. The bloggers also think that if they write about certain specific incidence it is not an objective description, but their personal point of view, many a times. The subjectivity does come in their posts. Also they do not write posts to inform the I blog therefore I am

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general public about that happening, but to express what they think and feel in context to that happening. Even at the time of the 26/11 terror attacks, people did not write what exactly happened at Mumbai, but they wrote pages after pages about their comments and fierce opinions, which is not like media, according to them. Bloggers also denied that they write about what will be interesting to the common public. Mass media always gives coverage to issues that will be of public interest, whereas bloggers do not think about public interest but write about things which interest themselves. Bloggers also perceive journalists to be going out to gather stories, do firsthand investigation, confirm sources and write the reportage. Whereas bloggers opine that they do not go out to gather the stories. Their role is pretty passive. Whatever happens to them, what they get to know about through other channels of communication, they write about it. There is hardly an investigation of any issue while writing the post, nor do they think that they perform the function of watchdog of the society. There was an interesting statement made by a respondent saying I am a normal blogger, and I would not like to be called ‘media’! This and couple of similar statements like this generate the enquiry of the non acceptance shown by bloggers on being journalists. The bloggers who expressed these opinions were from the fields other than media. There was a representative sample of media, who supported this denial of being media. They opine that bloggers remain distinct from journalists in a sense that their very approach towards a particular thing is different than of a journalist. It is about views and not news.

5.10.2 The contemporary mainstream media from their eyes What constitutes as the mainstream media always changes after certain period of time. Today, newspapers, television, radio are considered to be mainstream media with internet being named as new media. Internet is structurally different from all these media with reference to its reach, access, interactivity, cost and credibility. For most of the respondents, internet was the highest consumed media. As they consume the new media at high rate, and are aware about the blogs as

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a new ‘medium’ it was important to know what they think about the contemporary mainstream media. Most of the respondents expressed dissatisfaction about the performance of mainstream media, and elaborated their accusations as follows: •

Various biases: it was expressed by most of the respondent bloggers that mainstream media operates under lot of biases. There are biases with ideology of that particular media house, which get reflected in the media content. Traditionally, media has been deciding what content should reach the masses, and it continues to do so. In selecting this content, biases play a great role. News might be portrayed in completely different way than it actually happened, or some news might not get published itself as it does not suit the ideological biases of that media. Mass media, by nature, follows the line of thought which is usually followed by masses. And

hence, many a times the unconventional voices do not get represented. This was the reason cited by many American bloggers on their blog posts about why did they turn to blogs. The unconventional voices, which the mass media never brings out, have got a good outlet through blogs, the bloggers opine. •

Commerce at centre: all bloggers agreed that mainstream media functions mainly on the motive of profit making. Now a days, the economic motive is seen behind all the actions done by the mainstream media. The sensationalization of various issues, the ‘tweaking’ of stories so that it suits a particular pressure group, etc were cited as the examples of commercialization of media

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5.10.3 The appeal of blogosphere The popular opinion shared in the USA is that common man turned towards blogging a credible important and impactful media because of the various shortcomings of traditional media. Here in this research majority of bloggers do not claim to have turned to blogging because they were unsatisfied with mainstream media, but blogging has some appealing advantages which pose alternatively to the mainstream media. The advantages spotted by these bloggers were: •

Independence: the masses never had a medium to express themselves, to make their voice heard. With blogs, a strong medium has been granted to the masses, who are independent of the mainstream media now. The common man does not have to depend upon the mainstream media to make his voice heard, opine bloggers. The role media used to play as the middle agent is becoming restricted. This was seen in the interesting answers the respondents put forth about celebrity blogging. A stream of opinion said that they do follow celebrity blogs, and it is better to read them, as they are supposed to be directly from the horse’s mouth, and media can’t twist the sayings. Media is completely bypassed here in this case. The role of media as middle agent doesn’t hold good in this case. Bloggers and their readers deal as separate independent entities.

•

True voice of masses: bloggers write on their blog posts largely due to their intrinsic motivation. There are no economic incentives for a common blogger. As blogger operates alone, without allegiance to any organization, and as there are no other forces which operate on blogosphere, one can be sure that opinion expressed on blog posts are true opinions of masses, without any external pressure applying there

•

Extremely local news: this advantage was discussed by couple of respondents. The mainstream media is always much generalized. It does not have a concentrated focus, as the target audience is supposed to be diverse and widespread. The disadvantage of this is that one can’t see very local news being portrayed in the mainstream media. Bloggers from various corners of the world blog about the happenings around, and hence one can get to read extremely local happenings in that particular area. For ex one can be in new York, reading about the interesting local happening in Pune, from a horse’s mouth, which he otherwise could not possibly have known.

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•

Repetitive topics in other media: niche bloggers expressed this opinion, that mainstream media, functioning on the economic motive and biased perspective, has severe limitations to the topics which get published through the medium. Many newspapers and television channels deliver a similar content all the while. As written in his book ‘blogs!’, David Kleine says “the newspapers are same- same from the reporting to the sex advice”. There is absence of certain topics from the discussions in the mainstream media. On the blogosphere one can find presence of those topics, and consume the content. Hence, blogs provide a good alternative for the traditional media

•

The democratic functioning of the blogosphere: this could be treated as one of the unique appeal that is posed for the bloggers by the way the blogosphere functions. According to the respondents here, the blogosphere is an example of a society which works on the principle of democracy. The power is held by the citizens of the society, in this case, by the bloggers. There is no external authority which imposes any rules or restrictions. It’s a free press, Bloggers operate at their will. There is complete freedom of expression and speech. It should also be noted that blogosphere also works like a society, with lesser restrictions though. Bloggers operate in a system, where the credibility of information is usually kept in check by fellow bloggers. If particular information is found to be incorrect, bloggers fiercely write and comment about it. And hence, the freedom of expression, debate and enquiry is followed very well in the blogosphere. Perhaps this is the reason that the idea of blogging censorship seems to be extremely intolerable for the bloggers.

5.10.4 Mainstream media’s relation with blogosphere Most of the bloggers interviewed were not from the field of media, and were only the consumers of traditional media. As they become the sender in the new media, it is important to know their opinion about the traditional media’s relations with the emerging medium of blogs. Some of the threads of opinions are as follows: •

Taking notice of blogs: all of them expressed that mainstream media today has started taking the blogosphere into consideration. Couple of newspapers like Hindustan times, Pune mirror etc feature a small column on the blogosphere. It is useful as most of the mass population in India does not have access to blogs, and it is important that what this I blog therefore I am

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‘alternative’ media is saying should reach them. Of course, regional language newspapers do not take blogging into consideration much. •

Having own blogs: many media players have own blogs now. This might be done to stay in the fashion, or it might be done as the mainstream media feels competitive threat from blogs. Many journalists are writing their own blogs, apart from writing in the newspapers or speaking on television. Hence, many of the media fraternity is common to the traditional mainstream media as well as to the new medium of blogs

•

Plagiarism: plagiarism is a commonly found problem on the web. As all the authors of content have a virtual identity, and it’s a humongous amount of content out there, plagiarism is very commonly found. Though plagiarism done by the newspapers and the television is a serious accusations expressed against the mainstream media. Many bloggers expressed that the newspaper and television journalists use the content on blogs, and present that as their original work, without acknowledging the sources. It was opined by the bloggers that it is extremely unethical of mainstream media to do that. This tendency is growingly seen in mainstream media’s journalists but it does not reach many people as the masses simply do not have access to the online content, and they trust the mainstream media far too much. Bloggers express that it will cause the mass media to lose their integrity and credibility will suffer.

5.10.5 The present and the future as the mass media All bloggers agree, that however vibrant might the blogosphere be, it has not attained the status of mass media. Blogs is a medium which is extremely dependent on the technology, and the internet. Till there is not enough internet penetration and literacy in India, blogs will not be a mass media, as it simple will not reach the masses. Currently, it can be called as a ‘class media’, the medium belonging to a particular section of society. However, if we consider the virtual world of internet as a society with the ‘netizens’, blogs definitely have a status of a mass medium. It is a network of masses, with equal distribution power, without governing authority. And hence, speaking for that particular netizen community, it is actually “a medium of masses, by masses and for masses.”

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5.11 Ethics and censorship The respondents were asked about their opinions on blogging ethics and blogging censorship, where researcher came out with following bunch of opinions. •

Ethics moderately supported- almost half of the respondents said that having blogging ethics is beneficial. The medium of blog is still new. But it will surely have lot of impact on our society, and the blogging behavior should be ethical when the medium will grow. Or say if a particular blog enjoys a very good readership, the blogger has to be careful about what he writes and how, because that possibly affects a large online audience. There is also lot of plagiarism happening in the blogosphere, as the access to a big pool of content is quite open. As any other medium, some do’s and don’ts have to be followed here.

•

What is ethical? - The rest of respondents were ferocious in commenting about ethics. Their take on this was who decides what is ethical and what is not. Who is the judge of morality in do’s and don’ts? Ethics differ across people and situations. Hence it depends on an individual to decide how to be ethical.

•

Censorship vehemently rejected: all respondents except one, were completely against censorship of any kind in the blogosphere. Some reasons commonly spotted behind the refusal to censorship are:

•

Defiance of main purpose: the main purpose behind blogging will be defied with censorship. It is supposed to be a free press, a non restricted place where you could openly write about your opinions. A common man could express something in his own words, and would not be dependent on media to be fed with the information. He has his own choice about the content creation as well consumption. A serious accusation on mainstream media is also that the other media lack in providing a 360 picture many a times, as there are censorships working on the media content and media usually represents a side which suits its ideological structure. On blogosphere the issue is dealt with from various sides, as there are people having and expressing completely different opinions. This, according to the majority of respondents is the major charm of blogs, and it will be lost.

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Bloggers also very interestingly say, that blogs is a major medium through which the urban, aware, thinking class of society expresses themselves and it shows how multi layered and multifaceted the social processes are. If that single outlet is also closed or controlled, the society will start appearing monolith, which definitely is not a good thing to happen to any society! •

Structural shortcomings-Censorship being infeasible: there are millions of blogs in the blogosphere. Not even Technorati, the blog search engine knows the exact count of blogs, and that too active blog. It is simply not possible to track them all and issue censorship. Secondly, Blogs have no physical form like films or television serial, which could actually be physically handled and reformed. Another aspect is that the blogger doesn’t have to disclose his own identity. One can operate very well under a false identity and then actually censoring it, and punishing him in real world is simple impossible.

•

No Right Judgment: apart from the structural shortcoming, the judgment of what to censor and what not is also an extremely foggy area. In other media, the veterans in that particular field are asked to regulate the content created in that medium. For ex. censor board for film certification. As the medium of blogs is completely new, there is a lack of the authority that one has with

extensive experience in particular field. And hence, how will the censorship function, if it is executed, still remains a question. •

Emergence from within: An interesting opinion was put forth by a niche blogger. According to him, blogging is a self organizing media. It is not a top down or a hierarchical system. It is like a network or a web. Where bloggers of varied standards would enjoy various social positions. As the blog medium evolves, there could be more experienced bloggers with large amount of readership, and they could put forth some guidelines for the bloggers. As it is not a centralized medium, the issuing of external censorships would not work here.

Looking at the responses, it can be said that the popular opinion in the blogosphere can somewhat be for blogging ethically, but it completely opposes the idea of censorship.

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5.12 The ‘not- so-goods’ of blogging The blogosphere has been growing with tremendous speed, and the blogs are being used for all the more purposes, and it does not mean that the medium is completely free of limitations or the negative aspects. For few bloggers interviewed here, blogs are all well, without a single negative. Though, most of them have own notions about the limitations of the medium. Following are some of the aspects that the respondents came out with:

•

The absence of gatekeepers: though it is perceived as the main appeal of blog, they also feel the threat in having an open space to write without any check. Many of the respondents think that the absence of gate keeping gives rise to lack of credibility and hence reduces blogs standing as reliable source of information. They are also aware about the ‘flaming’ going on the blogosphere. Robert Dilenschneider describes it as, “The blogosphere has created an open, unfiltered megaphone for anyone with a computer and a modem, a striking characteristic of contemporary times is an unseemly incivility”.( express computer 2008) The respondents expressed similar opinions, and worried that blogging could be one of the threatening tools for fundamentalists and anti social elements.

•

The dependence on technology: blogging is a medium, which is structurally very heavily dependent on technology. For being a part of blogosphere one needs internet access and considerable amount of internet literacy. In India, the Internet penetration is minimal, and the access as well as internet literacy is still limited to a very restricted section of society. As it is limited, the impact on the general masses is also very limited and for this reason, blogs can not at all be qualified as true mass media.

•

Time consuming and obsession creating: many of the respondents, who enjoy large no of audience, admit that blogging takes up a lot of time. when one writes a thoroughly researched or a serious post, he or she is very conscious about the quality of writing, and the probable feedback of readers, the reactivity chipping in. the probable reaction to a particular content posted by the blogger, and the possible virtual social interaction develops a certain angst in the blogger, said the respondents! An obsession of checking followers, checking the profile visits etc, making the blog more and more reader friendly and attractive also develops, opine the bloggers.

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5.13 Crystal gazing- predicting future of blogs Blogging is a medium emerging at fast pace, and it shows chances of tremendous growth and exploration. All the respondents were affirmative about continuing with blogging. They were asked about their prediction of blogosphere five years down the line. There were two opinions seen about what will happen to blogs. Most of the respondents predicted that blogs are “here to stay”. They predicted various possibilities about how blogging will grow. Some of the factors were:

•

Awareness about blogs would increase: most of the bloggers opined that the awareness about blogs is little if we look at the society at large. The findings of MSN windows survey back that, with their low figures about blog awareness. Low internet penetration is also a reason. As the medium will grow, the awareness in common man will be more, predict bloggers.

•

More serious bloggers: howsoever there is a fierce discussion about blogging being the mass media and replacing journalism, the fact remains that the awareness about blogs lack in common public, and in addition to that there are not enough serious bloggers. More than 50% of Indian bloggers are not very regular and they write mostly about their personal lives on their blogs (MSN windows live survey 2006). As more people would be aware about blogs, they will recognize the power of the medium and start blogging seriously.

•

Blogs will gain more legitimacy as a source of news: this research brings out the three ways in which people think about the blogs as a source of credible news. Many Respondents predict that just as more serious bloggers will emerge; the credibility of blogs will increase. These bloggers will verify their sources before writing, and will try to write objectively. Hence, the information on blogs will be viewed as credible. Of course all of them agree that blogging can never be a mass media in next five years, because most of the masses cant gain access to blogs possibly. But still it will be a strong influencer as it represents thoughts and opinions of a significant stratum of society.

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•

The medium will be economically viable: any medium has to be economically viable if it has to grow. Blogs should be no exception to this. Even today, bloggers do earn through their blogs, but the percentage of these bloggers is very less. As more people would get aware about blogs, start reading the blogs, and start taking the medium seriously, its readership will grow. Advertisers will consider blogs as an appealing medium. Many commercial agencies/ organizations will emerge who deal specifically in blogs, and

hence lot of turnover will be seen in the field of blogs. Of course, many express that once the market forces start dropping in, the credibility will suffer and the gate keeping process will start in some way just like mainstream media. The main appeal of blogs will be lost, they fear. Fewer respondents were not as optimistic about the future of blogging as others. They didn’t think blogging is the next ‘big thing’. The reason they cited was the minimal penetration of internet in India, the widespread poverty and illiteracy which prevents common masses to access blogs. As long as a medium is confined to a certain section of society, it can’t truly become a mass media, they say. They also cite examples of the internet itself, the email, the Instant Messaging and he social networking sites. There was a hush-hush about these things when they were new, and soon they became more streamlined, and the hullabaloo died out. Just like that blogs will become routine, and it does not show any potential to become a next big thing, they opine.

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6. DISCUSSION

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Any research can’t function in vacuum as said earlier. It has to have an environment to support. Researches in mass media especially can’t be done ignoring the larger framework of society around, and hence, it I important that the findings of any research should be understood fully with taking the social environment around. This research has the urban Indian society as its environment. And therefore it is important to discuss the inferences of this research in the context of the society around us. However, the issues which brought out interesting inferences and influence the blogging Behavior will be discussed here in detail in this section.

6.1 Twitter As seen in inferences, use of twitter was perceived in two extreme ways. One line of opinion saw tweets as full of nuisance value, while others appreciated it very much; saying that main appeal behind twitter was the quick and instant access to the virtual world that twitter provided from any place. This brings out some interesting questions. The respondents ‘feel connected’ when they are tweeting without any location restrictions. The basic question is why does this community of tweeters feel the need to stay connected all the time? Why does one think that one should know what is happening in the world around as and when it happens by using whatever means? Internet by its own structure has enabled the society to seek the information without any “spatiotemporal” restrictions. The information could be accessed from anywhere at any time if you have the internet. Still, as the users get acquainted to the medium, do they find it lesser useful and are constantly in search of a medium which delivers things even faster?

Speaking for the

contemporary mainstream media, the rise of 24/7 news channels and their popularity could also be seen as an effect of this growing tendency to want to know instantaneously what is happening around. Some of the respondents have expressed this opinion in slightly different way, saying that they can tell their readers what are they up to in couple of minutes, as writing a blog post is very time consuming. The time which a decent length blog post takes is perceived as a waste of time. This

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surely is the outcome of the modern day lifestyle, where time spent on personal things is increasingly becoming restricted. So the desire for everything to be “instant” which has practically become the virtue of our modern day life style, does it also reflect in our reasons behind a choice of medium and finding it’s use?

6.2 The motivations and needs behind blogging Motivation can be defined as what drives an individual to behave or act in a particular way. What does make bloggers write blogs was an important objective for this research. It can be seen, that the categories made of responses in the inferences section bear close resemblance to the categories made in the previous research which was reviewed as the literature. An inference could be drawn from this, that some of these could be universal motivations The same could be said about needs which also appear to be universal, that is found everywhere. All the motivations come from some of the very underlying needs of humans. The needs spotted here are not the only ones which operate; there is usually a huge plethora of the psychological happenings, which make the individual engage in certain behavior.

6.3 The reactivity The inferences about reactivity say that there is reactivity occurring to all bloggers in more or less amount. The concept of reactivity is an interesting one. We encounter with that at all corners of our lives. Whenever there is a direct or indirect social interaction, or even when our behavior is being observed by the outsiders, we unconsciously tend to change ourselves. In the mainstream media, there is not much scope for the reactivity to occur, as it is not user centric media, there were less no of bases for a person to judge the other person on the basis of his media use or media behavior. Though, contradictory to this is an example of famous study done in USA, named “I am ashamed to admit, but I watch Dallas”. The study is done for a different purpose, to know the moral hierarchy of the TV programs, though it does have the concept of reactivity as its base. When one is ashamed to admit that one watches a particular program, it is question of one’s perceived

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identity and the perceived self. The behavior changes in order to show or project a different personality to the outsider. Though, the use of this concept in mainstream media is limited. On the blogosphere, writing something on the blog, practically means opening that to huge no of unknown audience. Hence bloggers writing with making their identities public do not write about their personal lives. Naturally, a question could be put forth about this, that why do bloggers write about the personal things on the blog post at the first place if they do not want the public to read that. They of course want people to read that, though to the extent, and in a way which is controlled by them. This tendency to place very great importance on the probable audience is similar to many other media. In mainstream media, the existence of audience is not only considered but most of the times; the content is primarily designed keeping their needs, desires and expectations in mind. Though here the majority does not claim that they alter their topic selection, or their topic presentation is designed by keeping audiences in mind, the very existence of probable large mass audience affects their writing. Hence, the greater insight received through this study is that the concept of reactivity definitely exists in all the blogger’s posts, though in various different layers. This concept is multi faceted. Some of its broad layers could be picked out as: •

The hesitance in disclosing the personal details to the general public

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Desire of attaching the self image with a content which facilitates their ‘self image’

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Keeping in mind the probable audience a blog would get and modifying the writing accordingly.

Many bloggers blogging behavior could be explained in this light, which could be done as an independent research, and theorized

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6.4 Credibility of the bloggers The credibility of the bloggers is a complex issue. So far the credibility has been attached to the mainstream media almost without question. Whatever the traditional media, first print, radio and then Doordarshan used to report, people trusted it almost blindly. After making inferences about the groups of bloggers and the probable reasons behind their thoughts, we have to look broadly at the issue of gaining credibility, and what exactly does credibility mean at the first place. There could be two probable reasons for this complete trust that media enjoyed for past so many years.

1. There was an assumption that media functions on the traditional journalistic values, performs the duties of disseminating information. It was also believed that media is objective that is free of any biases, and it also performs a function of the watchdog of the society. Hence, whatever does the media report is in line with these operational principles, and hence one could have lot of trust for the mainstream media. Here, the credibility is understood as the trust at media’s transparency, and its role in social life. 2. The information, which gets circulated around the society, was always mono sourced. The print news agencies were not many in number, and the AIR and the DD were controlled by the government of India. They were the only functioning ones, and there was no competition existent to them. The sense of trust would have been increased with the fact that there is only one (or few) entity which is responsible for the mass communication.

Applying a contradicting point of view to the huge credibility enjoyed by the traditional Indian media, one could also say that the credibility could have gone down, given the fact that there is only one source of information, and it could be manipulating with the information.(which happened in the era of emergency in India) As the technology progressed, the media power earlier concentrated in fewer hands was freed a bit, and it brought about the privately owned media. But since the arrival of the internet, the equations of the media credibility have changed. With the internet, and particularly, the rise of blog, every other person had the power to be at the content creation and dissemination side in the

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communication process. Naturally, the ‘mono-sourced’ness of information was lost as one doesn’t have to depend on any one media. But it might also lead to the loss of credibility which was attached to media when the information was ‘mono-sourced’ The second and third group of bloggers discussed here is a social section, which does not attach credibility to the information coming from a single hand. In fact, their means of checking the credibility were that the stories coming from various sources should fit into each other. Here, the word credibility assumes a different meaning, that of the ’truth value of the information’. If the information coming from a medium is true, it is found credible. The concepts of transparency and media being objective are almost lost with this class, quite with the changing performance of contemporary mainstream media. Also, the niche blogging community represented in this study gives an interesting finding. The mainstream media was never representative of all the sections of society, and of course it can never be. But, as the media started losing its transparency, the news values changed for them, and it started becoming more and more subjective, the truth value of information quite suffered. The niche bloggers, who write about certain scientific issues, or technology facts, claim that the media either does not represent issues like pure science and the interested community in that, or it portrays it in very wrong way. And hence, instead of depending on mass media, we started our blogs, and we also trust other niche bloggers, because they might also have functioned in similar way. Another interesting point worth noticing is the ‘branding’. In any industry, a particular brand name enjoys certain amount of credibility. And mainstream media is no exception to that. Certain media brands enjoyed strong credibility from the mass base. And this brand gaining credibility concept works in blogosphere as well. Some of the early blogs or some of the most read blogs do enjoy large amount of credibility. For ex. India uncut by Amit Verma, or the Desipundit blog, these blogs have huge reader base, and many of the respondents actually said that if blogs like these publish a particular piece of info, we would trust that. Strangely enough, the brand logic works in blogosphere as well. This might be viewed as defying what the appeal of this media is. There is no higher authority and all are equal in the blogosphere is the general perception, but this concept of ‘brand’ defies that, asserting that like the real world, there are some hierarchies even in the virtual world of blogosphere

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6.5 Blog ethics and censorship Blog censorship and blogging ethics are a topic which is extremely controversial in the blogosphere. One of the distinct characteristic of blogging is that it is a free press. It is user generated content, and people are provided with free space to write. In this UGC, or user centric media per say, there is usually no restriction on what the users write about or how do they write it. . Therein lays the main appeal of blogging. The blogging ethics, on the other hand, dictate a guideline about what should be written and how on blog. And censorship practically puts control on what information should reach the audiences. The censorship is present in all traditional mass media- print, television, cinema, radio. As the reach and impact of media starts becoming stronger, the ethics of consuming the media and the censorship comes into picture. Blogs are still not considered very effective media in Indian context, but it definitely is a medium which is emerging at fast pace. And though the reach of blogs is very limited, it is quite intense in that limited space or limited no of audience. And ever since the mainstream media has started taking notice of the blogosphere in the big way, the content that is written on blogs has started bothering the real society just as much as the virtual society. The earlier mentioned controversies of IIPM, or the Barkha Dutt- Chaitanya Kunte controversy, are all indications that the content on blogs is treated in an important way by society around, and hence the talks of blogging ethics and blogging censorship have been going around for quite a while now. Why is censorship issued in most of the media has fundamental reasons behind it. Media is supposed to deliver the information which is of public interest, and it should be objective. If the information which goes to the audience is not checked for its sources, its usefulness, and its objectivity, the credibility of information is lost. Also, there is a great assumption that the media exerts tremendous control on popular opinion, or it can control what society thinks about at large, and how does it act as masses. As traditionally the mass media has been responsible for creation and dissemination of information among public, it holds itself responsible for what kind of content reaches the audience. And if the content is objectionable, and may cause social dangerous repercussions, it is censored. Also, the content providers are supposed to follow some norms while writing. These norms adhere to social values, and satisfy social expectations from I blog therefore I am

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the media. This is the reason that most of the times the extremist or “non favorable” opinions are curbed by the media before they reach to public. With blogging, the scene has shifted as every other person has gained access to the content creation part of media. And hence, the demand for ethics and censorship is increasing, with an apprehension that it might lead to the harmful content creation and dissemination, for there is no control on writing. The advocates of blogging censorship are citing the practice of flaming, examples of defamations done on various blogs, and the large amount of content which is being generated, which has no quality check on it. Also, some futuristic censorship advocates claim that as the medium grows, the economic motives start coming in. and hence, it should not happen that the medium of blog remains a free ground for all the economic motives at play. (With an assumption that the quality of content might deteriorate by that). Whereas the critics of the censorship take a completely opposite view. Their claim is that the main appeal of blogging lies in its concept of free press. All traditional media has been practically deciding what should be sent to read by common man and the contradicting opinions are usually never represented by the mainstream media. In blogs, all the opinions are freely expressed, and the real society which is often not monolith, but multi layered is given a chance to be expressed and represented. Also, one of the respondents said that, “writing whenever, and however you wish is only appeal that bloggers have, unlike the print media. There, even though you don’t write quality content, or if your original wish of writing is curbed, you get paid for that. In blog, hardly 1% bloggers get paid. So if the only strong appeal of medium is also denied, why will good writers turn to blogging?” Was the question of this respondent.

The insight These results are to be interpreted in the larger framework of the society around. If we look at these popular opinions of bloggers in this broader picture, and the social functions, it can be seen that it is to the large extent in accordance with today’s personal values. The young generation today places great importance on values like independence, freedom of speech and expression and democracy. All these values seem to be represented in the kind of answers given by them. I blog therefore I am

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The nature of blogging is very individualistic, as the creation and dissemination of content lacks any collective behavior. This suits the desire of today’s urban bloggers to be independent entities. The freedom of speech and expression is said to be a true characteristic of any liberal democracy. On the worldwide web, a virtual society operates totally on the principle of democracy. All the means of communication on internet, the email, the blog or the website give complete freedom to owner without any restrictions. And hence curbing the freedom of expression of ‘netizens’ is an idea, extremely difficult to tolerate for the bloggers.

6.6 Blogs as mass media? Whatever might be the bubble of blogging being the next mass media and replacing journalism, the inferences show here that Indian urban bloggers do not think that blogs can be called as mass media in India nor are there any chances it becoming one in the close future. This does not prove to be a very surprising inference, as the social conditions in India are simply not conducive for that. However, if we consider the virtual world of internet as a society with the ‘netizens’, blogs definitely have a status of a mass medium. It is a network of masses, with equal distribution power, without governing authority. In the virtual world, all Netizens are equal, having equal power. As anybody can have access to blogs, the medium is also quite open. And hence, theoretically the reach of blogs as medium is universal for the virtual society. There are blogs which dwell around variety of subjects just like mass media, and some of the bloggers are also trying to bring the journalistic element in the blogging. And hence, speaking for that particular Netizen community, it is actually “a medium of masses, by masses and for masses.”

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7. CONCLUSION

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After making handful of inferences through analysis and discussing them, concluding the research is important. As this research was not quantitative, it was not conducted on large no of sample, the conclusions made here are based both on the inferences made from what the respondents said as well as

various other probable factors whose existence was not most

precisely seen. The conclusions should not be generalized, though it is important to know what this research shows. The bloggers have a great range of topics to post their blogs. Most of the bloggers, unless they are niche bloggers, write about their personal opinions, incidences, views etc. there were no strong gender differences found in the topics they write on. The bloggers were also found to be interactive with the audience they get, with varying degrees and types of interactivity. They interact with the audience through the blogs, other means on internet or through meetings in the real world. And hence, the real and the virtual identities seem to interact at some point. The widespread audience was also a reason that the bloggers preferred blogs over emails. They also want their opinions to be heard, though in a way which is not coercing and intruding to their audiences, which seem to be interesting way of thought. There is also a possibility that micro blogging could be preferred over blogs, given the reasons cited for that. Though micro blogging (or twitter) was found to receive opinions at both the extremes. It was a source of nuisance for some, as well as a very handy application for others as it helped them to stay ‘connected’ all the while. While looking for the needs and motivations of bloggers behind blogging, six motivations were located. Namely, self expression, love for writing, peer influence, information sharing/seeking, socialization and self documentation. Self expression was seen to be the most popular motive behind starting blogging. The level of interaction of bloggers, mentioned earlier, and the reported motivations behind bogging were positively related. As motivations emerge from the underlying needs of individual, it was further attempted to look deep into motivations which brings out the needs. The need for attention, the need for sharing, and the need for social inclusion are considered to be the needs behind the motivations to blog. These are basic human needs, which generate most of the overt human behavior. There are some other factors which also shape the

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blogging behavior of people. Reactivity is seen as a major influence on what and how the bloggers write. There are various manifestations of the reactivity- ‘change in behavior due to existence of external entity’. It makes them change their content, writing style so that they will get desired audience, or so that a different personality could be portrayed through blogs. As blog is emerging as a new media, and the process of communication in the blogs being somewhat different than the one in traditional mainstream media, bloggers here and their blogging activity was studied with reference to many issues in mass communication. Sender is the prerequisite for any communication process to begin. The bloggers here were found to perceive the idea of being a sender in two ways. The independence of traditional media for the communication makes one feel like a sender. Or the number of followers or readers to a blog, effectively the presence of audience gives one a sense of being a sender, opined many bloggers. The issue of credibility attached to bloggers was also discussed, with again a varying degrees of credibility found. There were three ways in which bloggers associated credibility to other bloggers. One was a denial to trust blogs as credible source of news and information. Another section was ready to trust the blogs on certain credibility checks, where as another opinion emerged which refused to trust the traditional media itself, but trust the blogs. These opinions were examined in the light of the blogging behavior of these opining bloggers, and it was seen that the credibility could be strongly related to their blogging behaviors. The bloggers were also studied with reference to the mass media. It was seen that howsoever are the bloggers considered to be citizen journalists, bloggers themselves do not consider them like journalists, nor did they report to write with journalistic intentions. Though they do not seem to be happy about the state of contemporary mainstream media. Biases of mass media and the commercialization of it were the reasons found out to be behind dissatisfaction about the Indian mass media. In contrary, the appeal of blogosphere was reported by bloggers for reasons like independence, true voice of masses, provision of extremely local news, variety in topics range and most importantly the democratic function of blogosphere. Bloggers here also put forth a strong rejection of the idea of blogging censorship being executed, and moderately supported blogging ethics. The reasons spotted behind this rejection were the lack of right judgment, the defiance of main purpose behind blogging, and the interpretation of ‘ethics’.

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Bloggers also seem to be aware about the limitations of the medium of blogs, which were found to be fewer though. The future of blogging as a mass media does not seem to be very positive in India, according to these bloggers, given that internet penetration and the computer literacy is low. It can be concluded here that, bloggers approach the act of blogging with variety of motivations, and the needs. The blogging thoughts, opinions and behaviors exhibited by them, (ex. Micro blogging, credibility etc) are found to be positively related to their motivations, and also the social environment and the social values around them.

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8. LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE SCOPE

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8.1 Limitations Howsoever the researcher try to conduct the research in strictly maintained conditions and bring out best results, some gaps are bound to happen. This research also has some of the limitations which should be considered while reading this research. •

The methodology: the methodology employed in this research is of in depth interviews, which is purely qualitative. The research design as well as conduction of research lacks any quantitative variable, or method of inquiry or method of analysis. Qualitative methodology in itself suffers from some drawbacks, which are applicable here as well.

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Small sample size: the sample size here is 20. With 20 respondents, one can’t generalize a particular finding in a research and has to conduct a study on large no of samples to be able to form a generalization.

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Researcher’s Subjectivity: the results of qualitative research are heavily subjective to the researcher’s mentality, her ability to conceptualize, and her way to look at the things and interpret and analyze them. As the whole method is subjective to researcher, it might suffer from apparent objectivity.

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Limitations of area representation: more than half of the sample was collected from city of Pune, as it was feasible and convenient for the researcher. Where it was not possible to physically go and interview the bloggers, telephone in depth interviews were taken. Still, the cities represented here are only Pune, Mumbai, and Delhi. Blogosphere in India is huge in size, and spread across various cities in India. Sample from rest of the big cities in India is not taken here.

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8.2 Scope for further research Blogging is a very emerging medium in India, and it needs scientific inquiry of the medium to understand the medium and the audience through various contours. Though, Indian blogosphere has not been the subject of a detailed research oriented inquiries until now. Not many researches are available on these various contours of Indian blogosphere. This research is just a small attempt to get into the research of Indian blogosphere. In continuation with the findings of this research, there is a great scope for further researches. •

More sample size: Based on these findings, a quantitative questionnaire could be designed and a survey could be done on large no of bloggers. This would help the findings of this research to be generalized.

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Sharper focuses: This study was an attempt to come up with a general picture of average Indian bloggers’ blogging activity and the factors influencing that. a more focused research aim could be formed for ex. Finding out only motivations of Indian bloggers, or studying the patterns of interactivity on the blogosphere. This sharp focus would give a chance to probe more into the topic and come out with interesting and rich findings.

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Theoretical perspectives: many media scholars have established various theories with reference to sender, audience, medium, and so on. A research topic could be formed with a theoretical orientation of some of these theories. For ex. Finding out the motivations behind blogging could be done in the light of infamous ‘uses and gratifications theory’ etc.

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9. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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•

Boyd, Danah ; A Blogger’s Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium, School of Information, University of California-Berkeley

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Cassidy William (December 2007) , Online news credibility: an examination of perceptions of newspaper journalists, Journal of computer mediated communication

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Cissareli,S.K. ;Meyer G.E. (2008), ‘psychology’; Pearson Longman publication

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Drezner,D.W. , Farrell, Henry ( September 2007) the power and politics of blogs

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Ehrens, Frank (march 2006) ; The Washington post.

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exchange4media News Service (November 28, 2006)

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‘Express computer’, December 2008

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Foulger,Davis,( 2004,February) Models of communication process, retrieved from http://davis.foulger.info/research/unifiedModelOfCommunication.htm

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Greenslade, Roy (June 2008) “why journalists must learn the values of blogging revolution, The Guardian.

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Kleine, David; Burstein, Dan (2005) ‘Blog! How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business and culture, CDS books, USA

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Lasica, J.D. (April 2002) 'Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices', Online journalism review

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Li, Dan (2005) ; “why do you blog”: a uses and gratifications enquiry into bloggers’ motivations

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Nardi, B.A ; Schiano D.J, Gumbrecht,M ; Swartz,L: ‘I’m blogging this: a closer look at why people blog’

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Viégas F.B., Bloggers' Expectations of Privacy and Accountability:An Initial Survey The Media Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Welch, Matt, (2003) ‘The new amateur journalists weigh in’, Columbia journalism review

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http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/051026glaser, retrieved on 24th February, 2009

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog, retrieved on 23rd December 2008

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http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Girl-power-Show-Ram-Sene-whos-theboss/423115/ retrieved on 21st February,2009

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http://thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/ retrieved on 26th February, 2009

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-blogging retrieved on 30th January, 2009

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter retrieved on 30th January, 2009

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blogging_terms#R retrieved on 17th march, 2009

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http://www.blogossary.com/ retrieved on 18th march,2009

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com retrieved on 4th March,2009

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http://technorati.com/ retrieved on 25th March,2009

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10. APPENDICES

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10.1 Appendix (A) - Questionnaire

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Is internet the most consumed media for u? What about other media habits?

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When started blogging? What was the reason behind?

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How often you blog?

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What are the general topics? How do you select them?

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Do you receive any comments? Any unknown ones? Do you reply to that? Does it generate any sort of discussion?

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Do you have any followers? What kinds of feedback u receive?

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Which other blogs you read? Do you follow anybody? Why?

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Do you indulge in twitter/ micro blogging? Only text or photo blogging etc?

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Why blog? Reasons and motives behind?

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Does blog become a cathartic medium? Is it something more than the personal diary?

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Do your education/ profession affect your writing style, your concerns, and issues?

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Do you feel being in a position of sender? Do you consciously use medium? (With intention of bringing about some change or results?)

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What use you see in blogging esp. when Indian media is not controlled by government/autocrats?

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Blogging ethics? What are they? Do you follow? Blog censorship you feel should be there?

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Negative aspects of blogs that you perceive?

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Does blog become your identity? To what extent?

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Do any social relationships get formed? Virtual social interactions? Do you meet socially?

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Does blogging affect power relationships in media/ society in any context?

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Is credibility of information losing because of blogs?

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Do mainstream media take notice if you write something on blog? Ex pink chuddy. Will it happen in other issues?

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Do you think that mainstream media is not representing non conventional voices, and hence blog is a good medium for that?

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Which happenings in society might lead u to blog?

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10.2 Appendix (B) – Jargon of blogs Some of the terms used frequently in this research dissertation the ones which are a bit technical, or not the self explanatory. Also, one needs to understand certain terms which are not used in this research, but are important concepts in the language of blogs. They are explained below. The blogosphere: the collective community of all bloggers on the worldwide web is called as the blogosphere. It is not exactly a community in the sense that all the members do not know each other. It operates as a society. Blogroll: a list of blogs, which usually appears on the sidebar of a blog, recommended to reader by that blogger. Blogware: the software required to run a blog Blog search Engine: the internet search engines which solely search the blog contents and provide the information about the blogs. Technorati is the most popular one. Content spam: a comment left on a blog entry for the sole purpose of promoting a product, usually pharmaceuticals, gambling, or porn, and gaining links. Comment spam usually has nothing at all to do with the content of the blog entry. Group blog: a blog on which multiple users can write posts. Photo blog: a blog, where Photographs and images get posted predominantly. Podcasting: it is distributing audio and/or video files on blogs for digital players. Word comes from iPod mixed with broadcasting. RSS: Really Simple Syndication is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. RSS feed: The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated. It may contain only the title of the post, the title plus the first few lines of a post, or the entire post.

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Trackback: A way that websites can communicate automatically by alerting each other that an item posted on a blog refers to a previous item. An excerpt with a link to the linking blog usually appears on the referenced blog.

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10.3 Appendix (C) – Coded transcript

‘I BLOG, THEREFORE I AM’

Name of interviewee: Ms. Preeti Mudliar

Name of interviewer: Sneha Gore Date: 24th march 2009

Place: Skype Call

Interview Duration: 39 minutes

Background of the interviewee: Ms. Preeti Mudliar is a 27 year old who hails from Pune. She has done her Masters in communication Studies in 2004, From the University of Pune. Thereafter she has worked with the Indian Express, and then taught at the department of communication studies, university of Pune as lecturer. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.

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S: please tell me when did you start blogging and how did it start? P: I have been blogging since 2004-5. Blogging was a very new phenomenon then. And I was working for a news report at Indian express. That time I heard about blogging. There is this particular blogger called J Ramanand, whose posts I used to read and like. So that’s when I thought it’s a good thing to write a blog and hence i started blogging as well. S: and how often do you blog? P: not very frequently. There are some days when I post every alternate day, and there are some days when I don’t post altogether for a very long time. I just have a dry spell. There are phases in my writing. There are too many things going on, too much work to do, that time I don’t pay much attention to my blog. S: so it’s not a very priority thing for you. P: yeah, as long as my writing is concerned, no. but as far as reading other blogs is concerned; I do read them very regularly. S: ok. What are your other media habits then? Is internet most consumed media for you? P: right now, yes. Simply because I am away from home, and don’t have any access to most of other media. Right now it is centered on internet. My media habits will change definitely if I am back home. S: but when you have access to other media, was internet the most consumed media for you anytime? P: no it was not. I would say I used to access other media in equal amount. S: ok. So what are the topics that you cover in your blog? P: mostly I write about the personal reflections. There are some instances – take Mumbai attackswhere my blogging is not as personal as it usually is. Simply because them magnitude of the issue was such that it affected me personally, and also because I was far away from home, so it affected me writing about that. But it is usually about myself, my things, my emotions, experiences.

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S: then what is the difference between your blog and your personal dear diary? P: I haven’t had very personal dear diary ever. But if you ask me the difference, diary is for my personal viewing, where blog simply is much more public medium. I know there will be many other people reading it beside me, so I am obviously going to be much more circumspect about the things I write, it’s not going to be a confessional box about me. Because it’s going to be a part of my public identity, so I am going to be very careful about how I come across to people. I have control over it. So it is not a dear diary S: speaking about this identity? Does your blog become your virtual identity? Do you think your blog becomes the online version of Preeti? P: it is a part of my identity. I wouldn’t say my blog is my complete identity. I have other representations of myself too on the internet, so I will say my blog is just a part. My social networking profiles also form a part of my virtual identity. If you do a Google search on my name, the links that would come would also form a part of my identity, so I wouldn’t clearly say that my blog is the only one identity that I have. I won’t say blog is wholly representative of me. S: ok, what kind of blogs you read? P: I love reading blogs which are very humorous but also inform me a lot. For ex, Ramanand, the person I mentioned who is responsible for getting me blogging, he also happens to be the youngest mastermind of BBC from India. He won mastermind at the age of 22. He writes lots of interesting stuff about films, about Pune-because he is based in Pune, so love reading things about that. I also read lot of Pakistani blogs, because I also want to know about what an average Pakistani has to say about the things that are happening. I am very y curious to know about the daily life in Pakistan. I haven’t come across too many blogs like this, but there is one Lahore Meta blog which I follow, especially since Pakistan is so much in the news right now. S: so do you find any differences in the state of Pakistan that bloggers are reporting and the state of Pakistan media reports of? P: well, if you see the way in which Indian media is representing the state of affairs in Pakistan; it is not very complementary to the state. Of course, Pakistanis are pretty saddened with the whole issues. They do not claim that fundamentalism, Talibanism does not exist in Pakistan, they

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are sad, and they keep saying that we need to make things better. But it is very obvious that we are not going to take a view which is not complimentary to state, and we are going to bash Pakistan at every moment we get. In a situation like this, blogs really help, because you get to know what it that the average common man is thinking S: if I ask you what are your reasons behind blogging and the motives behind it, what would be your answer? P: it is simply because a medium is present there; I would like to make use of it. People, who are highly motivated in a sense that they want to express their viewpoints. Blogs were a new feature; it mainly gives you an opportunity to make yourself heard. I love my opinions heard, I like talking to people, I want to let others know of my own views. Now with blogs, if I have my own space to do that, why not? S: is there any motive like socialization or connecting with friends? P: No. Nobody in my friend circle actually blogs. So it’s a very sad thing for me! (Laughs)My friends read my blog, but none of them have their own blogs. For socialization I look at Orkut or face book. Blog is not my medium of socialization. S: and do you have any followers on your blog? P: As far as I know I have 4 followers. S: and they are not your friends? They are the unknown ones? P: one of them is a friend, he just stumbled across my blog accidently, and found whatever I have written there, liked it. So he drops on blog, we chat he tells me what he liked about my writing, invites me to read his blog etc. so…It’s like that S: do these readers leave any comment on your post? P: Usually. They may not leave it on blog. What happens is we discuss whatever I write during online chats. So even if they don’t leave a comment on the blog itself- well they say they are not as good writers, they are shy of disclosing their identities! - Hence we end up in discussing about the blog in our chat conversation.

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S so it means the conversation does not end there on blog. It gets carried on.. P: most definitely. Because I am also commenting on things which I might have discussed with them. For instance, a film that I liked. It’s possible that the discussion may have ended in a post on my blog! If I have written a movie review, they may have read it and then would generate a discussion. S: what’s the nature of the stuff that you write on your blog? Its simply text or it is photo blogging, podcasting etc too? P: no. I do not upload any personal photograph. If I find something relevant to my post, then I may. For ex. I did a film review on fashion, so I uploaded a poster of fashion. I wrote a post on university that I am studying in, so I uploaded the university mascot! And no podcasting. I simply do not have any inclination at podcasting right now. S: ok. Do you indulge in micro blogging? Something like twitter? P: no. I do not indulge into micro blogging. And the reason is none of my friends are on twitter. So I do not know what I will be doing on twitter anyways. S: but then how do you like the idea of twitter? P: I think it is very self indulgent. May be I am saying that because I am not on that. I do visit other people’s updates, but you know, it is very similar to face book status messages. I find it pretty strange that people report every minute activity of their life. That I am reading now, or I am sleeping now. I have people on my face book who have updates like this. I just returned from school etc. I find it a bit tedious. Not that I don’t put up statuses on face book, but not with the frequency that others have. S: if your blog is more about your opinions or views, then what do you think is the difference between a forwarded mail and a blog post? You could as well write a mail to 100 people. What is the special appeal in blogs? P: it involves too much of work (laughs) and also involves element of coercion. I have written this, so you must read this. But if I am putting this on blog, I am not forcing anybody to read, they are free to do what they want. If I am to forwarding this to people, I am asking them to take

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time off and read whatever I have written. Blogging is completely voluntary. I write it voluntarily, people reading it voluntarily. No force involved. S: does your blog become a cathartic medium for you in any way? P: earlier it used to be. Earlier when I used to be upset, my blog was the medium I would resort to. Now..well, I would say it is cathartic in a way. S: up to what extent? Coz you just now said that you are conscious about unknown people looking at your blog. There is a concept of reactivity occurring. So till what extent are you cathartic? P: to the extent that I would be comfortable with. That is, I would not disclose every single emotion that I feel about. But I am comfortable in revealing the part of emotions I have undergone. If I am having a particularly tough time, or if anything that I feel strongly about, I would not hesitate. I think I have a lot of control because I choose the words carefully, in a way which I want to narrate my story. So even if it is something that’s going to be cathartic, since I am going to be picking up adjectives, the narrative style, I still have lots of control on how is it going to look like. I may have gone through an extremely bad phase, but it’s up to me how I put it. I may put it humorously, in lighter mood, anything. So howsoever cathartic it is, I still exercise lot of control over it. S: do you think your education or your profession affects your writing issues, styles, concerns etc? P: most definitely. I had been journalist, and I would not formally be a journalist any more, but I have not stopped being a journalist. Also it is my professional concern as academician that affects my writing. Also I am much more conscious. I know that there are people who know that I have been writing. And hence if I myself am not satisfied with the words or flow, will not post it. S; ok, you have just now said that you have been a journalist. I need not explain to you the concept of being a sender etc. do you feel that you are in a position of ‘sender’ per say?

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P: yes yes, I do. But I would be a sender in a true sense of a term if I have lot of followers. My blog is not very popular. But for someone like Amit Verma, India’s most popular blogger, he would definitely be in a position of sender coz he has a large following. But I am just an average person blogging about average things. I am not really blogging about best things, nor am I best blogger on the scene. In traditional model of communication, yes, I am a sender, but according to me, I will be a sender only if followers are there. S: so then if you have huge no of followers on your blog, you can be a powerful sender you think? P: most definitely. S: ok. Now speaking about the Indian blogging scenario, when you know that Indian media is not autocratic or Government controlled, what different use blogging have in Indian scenario? To large extent it is reporting fairly what is happening in outside world. Then.. P: NO, I WOULD DIFFER HERE. I don’t think Indian media is doing fair job of reporting at all. You could say that it is liberal, but for me it is mainly controlled by the capitalists for whom profit is the main motive. For ex. Times of India can’t be called as a good newspaper, simple because most of its news stories and articles are paid. So In this case if an average citizen goes to find out what is happening, blogs are a wonderful medium. I think Indian media is extremely autocratic; it operates under its own rules. For ex. NDTV filed a suit against a blogger because he said something against Barkha Dutt. And none of the other media reported it. Not even Indian express, they are supposed to be journalism of courage. They did not take a cognizance of that. TOI did not. HT did not. I think Indian media is ruled and regulated by profit making motives. S: ok. So in that case, blogs help. They do fair amount of journalism according to you? P: I don’t think bloggers look upon themselves as journalists. They look at it as more of self expression. So they are not consciously behaving as journalists. Unless of course they are into profession of journalism. I don’t think they really fulfill the role of a journalist. Because if you look at the traditional meaning of journalist, it is about truth, traditional journalism, act as the watchdog of the society. Now simple blogger writing about an event is not necessarily the watchdog of society. So how would you call a blogger a journalist? That’s my point.

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S: speaking for yourself, you have been a media student, teacher, a professional journalist and a blogger. So do you think the lines between them are blurring in any ways? P; no, because bloggers do not approach an event in a way that a journalist would. If they both were to cover a same event, a journalist would follow the inverted pyramid structure etc. bloggers are not bound by these constraints. The journalist is working under a pressure of a deadline. He will write, a subeditor will take over, he will decide about the headline, editing etc. now a blog post would not follow so many steps. So for me the lines are still quite distinct. S: so we would say in traditional journalism, a certain amount of gate keeping is done, which is not present at blog. So do you think this leads to change in power relationship in media world? See until now the no of senders used to be limited, gatekeeper used to decide the policy, which content will be printed etc. now, there are too many senders and too many audiences with blogging. So the power relationship between the gatekeeper and the society. Is it changing? P: no. these relations are changing only as far as educated upper middle class is concerned, because to know what bloggers are saying you need to be literate, that is conversant with English, and you need to have access to internet. Most of the India lacks both. They would still be dependent on Hindi or regional media, mainstream media. Power relations might have changed for you and me, but not for our maid servant. So when the lower class also enters into the picture, we can say that power relations are changing. S: speaking on this gate keeping, now the information is not gate kept everywhere. It is no more mono sourced. So with this, do you think the credibility of info is losing? P: no, personally I would trust a blogger more than I would trust the journalist. Because I have been a journalist, I know how news stories are written. There have been times when we have been looking at blank sheets in the news room, there is no news, and we would say “produce the news from somewhere”. You go out and turn a small event into news, that’s what is happening with more proliferation of news channels. They sensationalize everything. So for me I do not give much of credibility to even NDTV. For me, Barkha Dutt lost all her credibility with the kind of news reporting she is doing, or with the kind of mass hysteria she has engendered with Mumbai blasts. As far as popular media is concerned with educated, urban English speaking class, their credibility is going down with the exception of business news channels.

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S: then what could be the reason behind bloggers’ credibility? Just because they are not paid to write whatever they write? P: first, they are not paid to write whatever they write; secondly the clan of bloggers is a closed one. if somebody is misreporting, or not being truthful about what he is writing, there is a pressure on that blogger to retract. Coz bloggers also go on other blogs, they comment and since it is open, you can’t bar anybody from visiting. Of course blogger.com has made it possible for you to allow only those people to read whom you want to. But over all I can’t talk nonsense on my blog, I can’t lie. Because there are other bloggers who are watching me, reading me. They can immediately ask me what the rot that you are talking about is. But for example, if I am watching NDTV, I feel Barkha Dutt is talking rot; I can’t do anything about this. I can’t call up NDTV and speak to her. There is no chance of connection between journalists and common man. What credibility are we talking about? S: speaking about this Barkha Dutt and Chaitanya Kunte case, there are two opinions about this. One says we are free to speak our own minds, who are you to decide what we should speak and what not. Other is saying Chaitanya Kunte should have verified his sources before speaking about her. There are lot of blogging ethics involved, and people saying blogging censorship should be performed. What is your opinion about that? P: I don’t think there is need of any censorship on bloggers. And as far as Kunte case goes, how can he NOT have opinion about something? NDTV can’t file a suit against anybody merely because he has an opinion about Barkha Dutt. I have an opinion about Barkha Dutt. I am very clearly telling you that I don’t have any credibility to reporting that you do. Now tomorrow if I have an opinion about something NDTV will sue me. This is absolutely ridiculous! And what ever happened to Chaitanya Kunte, I think that was blown out of proportion and NDTV had absolutely no right to send him a legal notice and force him remove his post. This had also happened earlier with Gaurav Sabnis and IIPM. So I am saying the cases are blown out of proportion. No media on earth has any right to say that you can’t have an opinion about something! S; ok, but then should there be some kind of ethics followed? Should people b e a bit more responsible about what they write?

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P: sere, the law of market takes place always. If I am writing I will obviously have followers. If I am not writing, nobody will even pay attention to me. Also, I don’t know how you would regulate internet. I could have ten different blogs. I could open a blog under a false name. I could do it anonymously. It is not as easy as censoring a film, where you know a film has a physical form; you have the reels with you. Blogging is not like that. I would like to know how people intend censoring a blog, because I find it a very impossible task. There are so many loopholes through which you can escape. It is not practical. S: do you think mainstream media is taking notice if you write something on your blog? For ex. Pink chuddy. It started as a blog campaign and suddenly became a concern of whole nation. So would it happen otherwise if the issue is not sensational? P: see pink chuddy was lever in the sense they also marketed it very well. It’s not like they had pink chuddy blogs one fine morning and media took notice of it. Pink chuddy would have opened its BlogSpot and then would have informed media that we have done something like this. We still don’t know who the people behind are. As in, their professions. And a journalist was attacked in Bangalore; she was kicked and punched by men. So given that female journalist were also attacked- journalist visit nightclub frequently- they are supposed to be the liberal breed in society. So for all you know journalists themselves could be behind the pink chuddy campaign. Media would take notice, of popular bloggers like Amit Verma. They would definitely follow what Amit Verma says. But pink chuddy was just a clever marketing campaign. S: but say tomorrow if I write a blog on Narmada Andolan, and I do every possible marketing tactic of that. Would you say it will become a concern of whole nation? Issue which itself is not very sensational? P: no. in the sense, they will take your notice if you are famous. If Arundhati Roy writes it, media will pay attention. But if I write it, why will media pay any attention to it? My friends will pay attention to it. But for mainstream media to take notice of it, you have to be Arundhati Roy or Amitabh Bachchan. When Amitabh started blogging, I used to read his posts regularly. About SRK, Amarsingh and other stress etc. it was a good way to connect to people and get back the comments. But if I write on same, nobody will take cognizance. S: ok. So either you have to be famous or the issue has to be sensational.

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P: and also you have to write well. If you randomly write something, nobody will pay any attention. S: do you think Indian media is not representing unconventional voices? Like in US people said that our mainstream media pays no attention to unconventional things. So blogs are a good medium for us. Does that hold good in India as well? P: as far as hard political news or sports news etc go, I will still depend on mainstream media. But for ex. About good food joints across India, I will hardly know from mainstream. Or I read a blog bout the stuff which goes at IITs. Issues like this can’t be read in newspaper. But for ex. About Varun Gandhi case, I can’t depend on bloggers. Because no blogger has access to him. If I call him up and say I am calling on behalf of X media house, probably he will talk to me. But without any organization, no chance of getting information. S: which happenings in society would lead you write a blog- personally? P: I write a very personal blog, so largely social happenings would not encourage me. But generally speaking, I would write about the books I read and films I see. And something like Bombay attacks. S: what are the negative aspects you think blogging has? P: well, I don’t think blogging harms me. If I don’t like a particular blog, I will not visit it. Even if there are negatives, blogging is totally voluntarily. So positives are far more than negative. Obviously blogging is used by fundamentalists to have narrow group blogs. But that’s their voice. They are free to express. S: are you planning to continue blogging? Do you think blogging will be as strong medium as mainstream in five years down the line? P: yes, most definitely I am continuing. If the education levels go up, or the net access is available everywhere, it will grow. More people will look at blogs as source of news. But in India the access is to upper stratum, I don’t think mass media faces a challenge from blogging anytime soon.

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10.4 Appendix (D) the respondents’ information and contacts No

Name

Age

Location

Contact

1 Aditi Kulkarni

23 Delhi

[email protected]

2 Aishwarya Ramkrishnan 3 Anuja Rathi

20 Mumbai

[email protected]

24 Pune

[email protected]

4 Ashish Thakare

23 Pune

[email protected]

5 Avinash Parbhu

19 Mumbai

[email protected]

6 Garima Goyal

23 Pune

[email protected]

7 Meeta Kabra

35 Pune

[email protected]

8 Navin kabra

38 Pune

[email protected]

9 Persis Taraporewala 10 Prachur Goel

23 Pune

[email protected]

21 Mumbai

[email protected]

11 Pradnya Shidore

24 Pune

[email protected]

12 Prateek V.

22 Pune/ Mumbai

[email protected]

13 Preeti Mudliar

27 Pune/USA

[email protected]

14 Ramya

29 Mumbai

[email protected]

15 Sandeep Gautam 16 Sayali Marathe

32 Pune

[email protected]

26 Pune/Mumbai

[email protected]

17 Shashank Kanade 18 Suvrat kher

23 Pune/ kanpur

[email protected]

40 Pune

suvrat_k@ yahoo.com

19 Vaidehi Kulkarni

24 Pune/ USA

[email protected]

20 Yogesh Joshi

28 Pune

[email protected]

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