Blogging Reaches a Milestone: Ten Years and Counting

NPR (radio, how quaint!) is running a terrific series on their morning show marking the tenth anniversary of blogging. Check out this timeline of the blog, which includes details of how the word “weblog” morphed to “we blog,” to just “blog,” both a noun and a verb.

The part airing this morning (listen here) focuses on blogs and politics, including the way in which blogs are used by dissidents and human rights activists and the issue of censorship of blogging from war zones. They tell the story of Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger and human rights activist who has used his blog and other networking sites to publicize human rights abuses in his home country. He posted video of police brutality on his YouTube account, which YouTube then shut down they denied doing it at the request of the Egyptian government) only to reinstate it later after much public outcry. (If you are interested, you can now view the videos at Abbas’ YouTube link here.) I think it is fair to say that we have seen only the tip of the iceberg of what this technology means for governance and democracy around the world.

I suppose I should add, after learning that there are now over 112 million blogs (!), we thank you for choosing Opinio Juris as one of your reads.