The Blogging Revolution

Based on the interview between journalist Antony Funnell and author Antony Loewenstein who has just published his book, The Blogging Revolution, focusing on countries like Iran, Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, he discovered that many of these countries were desperate for transformation, therefore, making the internet a medium for voicing out their dissatisfaction and disapproval towards their ruling government. In China, people feel the necessity for having a democratic nation and to underground issues that were unknown to the world such as corruption. Some countries used it as a tool for development whereas some governments saw it as a threat. According to Loewenstein (2009), the government’s efforts on filtering the web makes absolutely no changes because people can always find their way around it, and people will always have freedom of speech on the web. The internet is a tool for communication, between writers and readers all over the world. People turn to the web to gain any form of information and knowledge on the web. Therefore, writers should apply Aristotle’s rhetoric, ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos merely relates to the credibility of an author, whether materials he or she writes is trustable, pathos is a method of appealing to the readers so as to gain readers attention, and logos applies logical thinking and argument of an issue (Aristotle 1932). O’Sullivan et al. (1983) states that rhetoric is the practice of using language to influence an audience and the language resulting from this practice (p. 200). Putnis and Petelin (1996) found that rhetorical thinking can be used to interpret messages and easily grab reader’s attention towards a particular issue, providing a system for generating and analysing discourse. In my opinion, the internet is a tool for learning because information can be obtained in just a mere matter of seconds. The world becomes smaller and communication is made easy. This tool may be beneficial to everyone because people are now able to communicate with the world through social networking sites, chat rooms and online communities. Information from all over the world is retrievable from search engines. Due to the availability of constant updates, news travel at a faster speed than ever before. I agree to Loewenstein (2009)’s statement that due to the technology advancement, people are able to do almost anything on the internet and the government has absolutely no control to citizen’s freedom of speech on the web. Therefore, creating messages on the web requires rhetorical thinking so as to gain readership and to ensure smooth flow of messages throughout the world. Like every other teenager, I look up information on the web to keep myself up to date on the latest happenings from all around the globe and as I have observed, censorship is simply unattainable due to the web’s vast diversity in content. In order to promote the internet for educational purposes, writers should apply rhetorical practice instead of illegal and unwanted elements to damage the mindsets of the young.