Just like culture in general blogging culture is unique to each country and should be understood before diving right in. This is exactly what Robert Scoble and Shel Israel discovered when researching for their book Naked Conversations. Although it seems like blogging is a phenomenon that is taking over everywhere this just isn’t the case. Some countries are much quicker to adapt, like the US and France, while others, like Germany and Mexico, have been slower to adopt it. This is due to things like social acceptability to speak out, misconceptions of blogging, and censorship. Unfortunately some barriers like government censorship in places like China are not going to be overcome anytime soon.
To delve deeper into blogging around the globe our professor asked us to choose a country that started with the first letter of our name and scope out what the scene is like. I took it one step further and chose the country that is pronounced like my name, Mali in Africa. While searching for individual or business blogs originating in Mali another barrier to blogging became very apparent, access to technology.
With a population of roughly twelve and a half million as of March 2008 Mali only had 100,000 internet users. During my search the only blogs I came across that were solely focused on Mali were from people studying abroad or there working for things like the Peace Corps. The majority of blogs were collaborations of blogs from all over Africa and most of those referring to travel. French is the predominant language in Mali so I might not have discovered a business or political blog because of the language barrier.
It seems pretty apparant that blogging hasn’t taken off in much of Africa because of the limited access to technology. Over time hopefully this will get better and we will then be able to really discover what the culture of blogging is in Africa and in each of its countries.
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