The Misusage of Blogs

With the mixture of the World Wide Web, weblogs can be put to good use such as citizen journalistic blogging. People can also express their feeling in their own blogs and unlike the mainstream media, more uncensored information is provided. However, these weblogs can also be misused for the bad intentions.

Take for an instance, bloggers insulting others on their blogs. According to Shadige (2010), a 28-year-old blogger known as Aduka Taruna, was arrested by the polices in Johor due to the post of an allegedly insulting comment on this blog following the demise of the late sultan of Johor. The blogger used the insulting words in commenting on how the announcement of the death of the late sultan of Johor was made. His actions aleady against the defamtion law.

Accorfing to Laws of Malaysia (2006), defamation act is an act relating to the law of libel and insulting others by communication that effected someone's reputation.
Johor police chief Datuk Mohktar Shariff (2010) advised the public to not misuse their blogs for not making any insulting or defaming allegations. He hopes that the arrest of Aduka Taruna will act as a deterrent others.

The blogger, Aduka Taruna.

(Image source: TranungKite 2005 )

Blogging with ethics

Weblog is a place for the internet users to share the useful information and sometimes to share about the blogger's feelings and expressions. It is true that people are free to express their feelings and opinions on their logs. However, bloggers are not supposed to use those insulting words that will cause others feeling unpleasant as it is such a disrespect action towards the audiences. 

Bloggers belonged to an online social networking system is known as the Blogosphere (Tremayne 2007). There are certain rules and ethics that need to follow by a blogger (Patterson & Wilkins 2005). According to Patterson & Wilkins (2005), as internet users and ethical bloggers, we need to respect the feelings an personal space of other web-users. Therefore, to avoid offending anyone's feeling, bloggers need to be more careful in choosing the information to post up on their blogs and the words used on their posts. According to Schriver (1997), decoding of a message is influenced by a person's general knowledge, personal experiences, feelings and culture. Different people with different background will have different perspective on the same issue. Thus, as ethical bloggers, we need to make sure that the contents that provided in our weblogs are balanced and understandable by the others and also should not abused the weblogs in the way that will causes harm and discomfort to the rest.

References:

• Laws of Malaysia 2006, Defamation Act 1957, The commissioner of Law Revision malaysia, Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Bhd, viewed 9th June 2010, <http://www.agc.gov.my/agc/Akta/Vol.%206/Act%20286.pdf>.
• Patterson, P & Wilkins, L 2005, 'Media Ethics: Issues and Cases', Fifth Edition, McGrawHill, High Education, New York.
• Schriver, KA 1997, 'Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Text for Readers', Wiley Computer Publisher, New York.
• Shadige, J 2010, 'Blogger held over insulting posting', viewed 10th June 2010, <http://yquake.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/articles/12eiss/Article/index_html>.
• Tremayne, M 2007, 'Blogging, Citizenship and the Future Media', Routledge, New York.