While trying to encourage more people into bridge blogging, I found out that writing for a bridge blog could be quite difficult. We need to present local subjects for the international readers. I've seen that language is influencing the visitors of a blog. Malaysian readers are coming to the Indonesian blog because of the similarity of the used languages.
Trying to write in term of citizen journalism is more difficult. There are so many things that would be important to write.
Jeremy Wagstaff from the Jakarta Post (20th May 2008) wrote in his column "The end of blogging utopia", he wrote that bloggers are actually culturally localized. Readers read stuff that speaks to them. Blogs are like windows into people's souls.
That is so true, while trying so hard to keep myself a bit distance from my personal feeling, I found out that it is always easier to write for a blog than for a cit-j website. Yet, it is a nice way of learning into "me". Questions and comments made me reflected more into my own soul.
I'm changing my way of posting my articles again. I do not have enough time to translate (or explain in English) and do all my personal obligations. I have a new domestic worker, an older lady but not a wiser one, so I can not run at my normal pace!
It's not an easy task but I'll try to keep myself on the track.
2 comments:
it's easy to write. many people write blogs, but are they heard? are they read?
so to be "a bridge blogger" one should not only be able to 'bridge' but also has audiences to be bridged!
in one academic article that i finished writing something ago (more than a year ago), i argued in a similar line with Wagstaff. i also showed that even when blogging in the same language (english) most bloggers are still confined with their own communities -- not many cross-communication happened. for example, in the case of iranian and indonesian bloggers, even when they blog in English and blogged about the same event, they didn't cross-communicate and didn't refer to each other.
Yes, it's easy to write...but I found out that writing for a blog is like writing an open diary to be read by anybody. There will be some misunderstanding caused either by our incompetency in the foreign language, or by our disability to explain local subject for the international readers. Mer, that is how people like you are very important for the future of Indonesia.
That is why I think this internet era is a chance to develop cross-communication. Visiting others' blogs and commenting can really help bridging the local view into the global perspective (but sometimes it does need a lot of time). I think, in that way, Citizen Journalism Websites are going to take an important position
because it helps saving our time for browsing! It helped me found your blog Mer...he..he...he...
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