INVESTIGATING THE BLOGOSPHERE – WEEK 8

One of our class assignments was to investigate blogs through links on a chosen subject. Chai and myself chose the political unrest present in Thailand at the moment. I thought it would be an easy task to start from one blog which would link with another and so on until we had linked 10 times. Unfortunately it was not to be. We were stumped after two blogs. The exercise was very fruitful as it totally destroyed my concept of the interconnectivity of the internet through links on blogs. I found that it is a simple process to very quickly finish up looking a t a web site created by a mass media organization. This situation seemed to become verified by my classmates as in turn they noted the same difficulties as myself when presenting their findings to the class. It has caused me to reflect on how prevalent the large corporations are on the internet.
It is now going to be very difficult for me to justify any notion within myself from the idealistic viewpoint that the internet would free the public from the tyranny of mass media corporations. It is becoming more evident all the time that the internet is extending the western democratic process of consumerism. I am noting that “businesses’ such as Yahoo, Google and the like are developing what could be termed ‘complete internet experiences’ for users, their sites developed so that the user is coerced through clever use of gadgets to keep returning to their perceived self produced home page which is in reality an attempt to capture the user.
Oh dear, the freedom’s promised by idealists may not be so free after all.