blog

A Web site or social media site where users can post a chronological, up-to-date e-journal entry of their thoughts. Each post usually contains a  link. Basically, it is an open forum communication tool that, depending on the Web site, is either very individualistic or performs a crucial function for an organization or company. There are three basic varieties of blogs: those that post links to other sources, those that compile news and articles, and those that provide a forum for opinions and commentary.

Part of the appeal of blogging is that the programs you use to publish your insights on the World Wide Web are easy-to-use and you do not have to be a programmer, or even know how to code.

Historical perspective: In terms of the origin, the first blogger --regarded by many to be Jorn Barger-- began his business of hunting and gathering links, to which he appended some of his own commentary, on Dec. 23, 1997. On his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: "I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word "weblog." Others, such as David Winer, who blogged with Scripting News, and Cameron Barrett, who started CamWorld, were alongside the Mr. Barger. So it is by widespread consensus that 1997 is a reasonable point at which to mark the emergence of the blog as a distinct life-form. However, some purists date the first web log back to 1991, when Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web, created "What's New?" pages that linked to other websites.

In 2013, China’s most influential microbloggers are being threatened with jail terms. In a new push to rein in criticism and mockery of government officials online, China announced that it would arrest people who post defamatory statements or rumors that get widely reposted on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform. A blogger can be jailed for three years if a post deemed illegitimate attracts more than 5,000 views or 500 reposts. State media have run numerous articles warning widely followed Weibo users, known as “Big V’s,” to watch what they say, and dozens have been arrested.

Also in 2013, continuing a mass arrest of top Muslim Brotherhood officials, Egyptian authorities jailed the group’s head of social media. Gehad el-Haddad, a U.K.-educated public-relations expert, was the foreign-media liaison for ousted President Mohammed Morsi and constantly posted on Twitter about the Brotherhood’s renunciation of violence. Egyptian authorities said that they would nevertheless charge him with inciting violence, presumably because he posted allegations of military atrocities.

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