chineseblogresearch

This chapter reveals the history of blog in China. By examining the past, I attempt to find out what are the factors that caused the development of blogs in China. I have divided the development into three stages: the introduction of blog into China; the proliferation of blogs; the emergence of Blog Service Providers or BSPs.

It is can be said that the initial development of the blogosphere in China, both on the mainland and on Taiwan, was inspired by the example of the American blogosphere. Further, the blog as a sweeping phenomenon in China was promoted by commercial organizations, and powered by venture capitals. The three major issues of Chinese blogosphere are, in my estimation, the Chinese translation of Blog, the exposing of privacy via blogging, and the potential of the participatory journalism of blogging.

This overview gives the background to the construction of the Chinese blogosphere and its subsequent development, which provides a context for the empirical research presented in later chapters. 

In order to study the situation of blogging in China, it is necessary to examine the development of blog in United States, where the activities of blogging emerged and are still thriving.

According to Winer, The first weblog was the first website, http://info.cern.ch/, the site built by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. From this page TBL pointed to all the new sites as they came online. However, it is disputable whether a webpage listing new links but without date and any personal marks can be identified as a weblog.  Barger mentions that the What's New page was started by Marc Andreesen (1993) as the first weblog ever.   Dave Winer began his first weblog in February 1996, as part of the 24 Hours of Democracy website. It helped glue the community together. Cameron Barret’s blog Camworld was started in 1997, with a better-developed format, which is widely adopted by today’s blog software. Up to that point, weblog was an activity of adding an entry to one’s own website regularly, usually with a date stamp.

According to Blood, these “original weblogs were link-driven sites. Each was a mixture in unique proportions of links, commentary, and personal thoughts and essays. Weblogs could only be created by people who already knew how to make a website. A weblog editor had either taught herself to code HTML for fun, or, after working all day creating commercial websites, spent several off-work hours every day surfing the web and posting to her site. These were web enthusiasts”.

There were about 23 active weblogs, as Garrett documents, known to be in existence at the beginning of 1999. This remained so until July 1999 when Pitas, the first free build-your-own-weblog tool launched, and suddenly there were hundreds of weblogs. Alongside Pitas, Blogger, Groksoup, Squishdot were also among precursors of blog-hosting services. They enable people to have their own blogs in three steps: create an account, name the blog, and choose a template. The size of Garrett’s list grew to 282 blogs by 12 Oct 2000.  Hence the era of proliferation arrived.

The events of September 11, 2001 led to a remarkable growth in blogs – both political and personal commentary –and created a phenomenon known as war blogs. This began a shift in the dominant blog genre from Web design and technology to politics, according to Gill. Many blogs which supported the U.S. "War On Terrorism" quickly gained readership among a public searching for information to understand that event; many new blogs in the same genre sprang up in this environment. By 2002, many of these were supporting the policy of an invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power. By the spring of 2003, Forbes.com recommended a list of "best warblogs" representing a diversity of opinions. 

From early 2002, American mainstream media began reporting on the blogging phenomena. Wired reported that National Public Radio (NPR) had devoted three minutes to how blogging was transforming journalism. It suggested that the NPR coverage meant that blogs were no longer trendy and had, perhaps, passed a sociological tipping point. Gill reports a rise of media sponsored blogs in US. Both Salon and Fox News added blogs in February 2002. Professionally written blogs now appear at MSNBC, Slate, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the Seattle Times –almost anywhere Big Media produces online news. In addition, media have enticed bloggers to make the transition from amateur to professional.

Meanwhile, some famous bloggers enjoy a wide readership outnumbering most local newspapers. Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, has created what is arguably the most visited blog in the world, Instapundit with a daily average of 96,000+hits. Other popular blogs include Gawker.com, which  averages 35,000+, and Gizmodo.com, which averages 37,000+..