What is a Blog?
A blog is a website for which an individual (or a group) will frequently add messages, photos, video clips and their favourite music as well as links to other websites.

How popular is blogging?
According to a recent Guardian/ICM survey, 14-21 year olds in the UK spend on average eight hours a week online. Accordingly, much of this time is spent developing personal content. Blogs have become so popular that now a third of UK teenagers maintain their own online content. Moreover, blogging has given rise to a whole new vocabulary used in the Blogosphere (the collective term for all blogs).

Why do people blog?
Blogging offers the younger and more technologically-savvy an ability to communicate freely on any given subject. UK youth are no longer content with the previous one-way stream of media information as delivered by newspapers or television. Conscious of this change, media operators have tried to tap into the blogging generation. The BBC and several of the larger national newspapers (such as The Guardian and The Telegraph) run simultaneous blogs to increase the interaction with their customers.

Dan from Cambridge claims that it is the freedom of perception and of prose that attracts potential bloggers. Dan explains that ‘you have no restraints, no word count, no professor sitting waiting for your script. You don't have to use any language that you don't want to; you can make up words; you can spout forth about anything in any way that you want to… It is an opportunity to abandon all rules and let yourself go in a literary sense.’ [dpwright, UK]

Blogs : connecting youth worldwide

Whilst many Blogs focus on more trivial subjects such films, music and the latest fashions; some blogs have become a means for dialogue between different cultures. A recent British Council project, Reach Out, focused on connecting the UK youth with their counterparts in North Africa and the Middle East.   

The issues of censorship and freedom of expression are of paramount importance to Arabic youth. Reach Out gave young people from across the Middle Eastern region the opportunity to challenge these issues with youth in the UK through forums, a live video conference or the blog of the events taking place.

Little Frank
February 2006

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