My Literature Review
In the olden days, people wrote the stuff that happened in their daily life in a book, which is also known as a ‘diary’. However, after internet is invented, we would be able to send important documents via something called E-mail which the person received immediately. Not just E-mail, “blog” was also invented in the early 1990′s. It is an online diary where its viewable to public unless the blogger decides to set their blog private but isn’t that what a online diary for?. With the invention of online diary(blog), people would be able to update their friends easily just by giving them the link of their blogs which makes it better than writing in a diary because a “offline” diary is usually only for the writer himself to read.
Not long after, blogs was even upgraded where people can add things such as widgets(applications), music player or even a chat-board on their blog so viewers can comment on their daily post or even chat with the blogger himself. This has made everything more convenient.
In the recent years, something called blog shop has been invented. A blog shop is a blog that contains the catalog of the items that is available for sale. Now, people would be able to buy stuff online in blog shops. There is a fair share of supporters and haters for blog shop because even though customers can buy clothes that are imported from other countries, there might be some dishonest sellers which claims to sell authentic clothes from other countries when they are fake and and is even sold at a high price. However, more and more sellers tend to sell stuff such as contact lenses in the recent years but it was banned not long ago because of fake contact lens being sold online. For those customers that have bought those fake contact lenses, some have causes damage to their eyes and some even turned blind but still, some people chose to still buy contact lenses on blog shops because of the variety of choices.
Next, the recent trend of blog is having “freedom of speech” on blog. Those people write what they want , even to the extend of scolding people on their blog, using vulgarities but when asked, they said it’s their freedom of speech and this is their opinion so why can’t they say it out since its their blog(online diary). Some people agree to this but the other group feels that their blogs are viewable for public so they have to be careful of what they write on their blog. Because of this “freedom of speech” on blogs, quite an amount of people have be sued because of what they write and some is because they wrote political stuff but ironically, isn’t this their blog where they express their feelings?
One recent case of online blog wars was between asia or shall i say, Singapore most popular blogger, xiaxue and another less famouse blogger dawn yang.
This is one of the blog post i saw on xiaxue’s blog (http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-idol.html). This online “war” went on for several months and dawn yang even sued xiaxue for defaming her on her blog but it backfired and xiaxue won the case. The lawer’s letter can be viewed at http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/2008/07/lawyers-letter.html .
For xiaxue , she loves to exercise “freedom of speech” because she feels that in a blog, she can say what she want and she doesn’t want to show a fake side of herself online as compared to real life .
Not just for xiaxue, alot of bloggers you see everyday have online “war” with other bloggers or their ex-friends. etc.
Thus, because of the invention of blog, it has led to a lot of problems although it makes writing a diary more convenient and easily accessible. People wanting to prove that they are the same when online and real life so they use “freedom of speech” on their blogs but of course, with a certain group of people disagreeing with that. Also, people being duped of the clothes they seen on blog shops believing its authentic and some even got scammed of their money and did not receive their items after sending out the money.
What i can conclude is that, for everything that is invented, there is both good and bad points and when there is supporters, there is bound to be haters so it affects differently for people in the society, some in a good way, some in a bad way.
Sources: http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/2008/07/lawyers-letter.html
Xiaxue’s blog :www.xiaxue.blogspot.com
http://www.web2weblog.com/50226711/blogs_vs_freedom_of_speech.php
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_348017.html
http://www.moh.gov.sg/mohcorp/mediaforums.aspx?id=21110
http://www.asiaone.com/Business/SME%2BCentral/eBiz%2BHub/Story/A1Story20090814-161136.html
