Knowing where to start in a project like this is rather difficult, so I’m justing going to post this because it relates to something I’m drafting for the second post. It is a review of Antony Loewenstein’s recent book The Blogging Revolution, which I wrote for The Big Issue. As I begin to find instances of how the five estates cross, I’ll post those, but consider this one of the posts under the commementary on developments and ideas section of Blog UP!
The Blogging Revolution claims to present us with instances of dissident citizen journalists using the internet to effectively challenge their oppressive governments and state-run media. Instead, we get Antony Loewenstein’s account of complicity between Western multinationals, the Bush administration and developing nations to suppress these voices.
There is a disappointing lack of actual content from the bloggers, replaced by long summaries of each country’s political climate. Of the six countries profiled, only two (Iran and Egypt) sport blogospheres exerting enough public pressure on their regimes to be considered by Loewenstein as amounting to revolution. Yet, he chooses countries bearing evidence of US-led Western ‘liberation’ efforts actually contributing to the suppression of independent, dissenting voices.
The Blogging Revolution is too heavily focussed on Loewenstein’s own anti-US agenda intentions, merely dazzling us with speculation about a burgeoning fifth estate and then bottoming out on the evidence of its existence. Readers interested in an objective account of how citizen journalism is affecting social, cultural and political change would do well to read the blogs themselves.
Filed under: commentary, ideas, reviews | Leave a Comment
Tags: Antony Loewenstein, commentary, ideas, reviews, The Blogging Revolution
No Responses Yet to “Review of The Blogging Revolution”