Blogging and Freedom of Speech

What is it about?

The power of blogging are allow people to bring out a transformation of liberal and democratic in six different countries – Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and China.As mentioned before in this blog, there are 133 million of blogs records indexed by Techonorati since 2002 (Techonorati 2009). Its shows people nowadays are always expressing their view through blogs.

In China, there are web and blogger will have the freedom of speech about corruption and shoddy building issue. Coonan (2010) stated that China government will defend its right to censor online content programs such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo and continue to stop access to information that might threaten the country but it guarantees to let the citizen freedom of speech on the internet.

However, internet in Cuba is least developed and government does not allow freedom of speech association because internet seen as threat to the country. In order to block outsiders influences in Cuba, government are only allowing people to access the ‘intranet’ (Abc.net.au 2008).

In Egypt, the internet was going to be great to build the economy. Nevertheless, the government realized very soon the internet was still a threat to the rule of the country as bloggers are trying to expose the horrible side of the government in Egypt by using YouTube, Bluetooth and blogs. Larry Pintak, a journalism professor at the American university in Cairo stated ‘bloggers are having a ripple effect, changing the rules for Egypt’s state-controlled media’ (Dinnick 2007).

Moreover, bloggers are trying to support the idea of Islamism through the web and activists in Iran. For example, people are writing out the issues about defence the freedom of speech in Iran to communicate with one another through Facebook. It has been acknowledged (Putnis and Petelin 1996) that writing is more precise, detailed and concise compared to speaking.

In defense of freedom of speech in Iran (Source: Facebook 2010)

There are only minority of the population in Saudi Arabia use the web. Government continued to restrict freedom of speech and press although there has been an increase in press freedom over a series of years. This has been emphasised by the government in Saudi Arabia Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (State.gov 2004). Therefore, blogger do not have freedom of speech to change their Government as compared to Iran.

Lastly, the poor human rights in Syria have caused the Syrian who involved in political activist arrested by the government (Popescu 2010). Below is the video regarding freedom of speech in Syria:

Conclusion

In my opinion, it is better for government to allow and accept freedom of speech from citizens maintain a peace and harmony country.

Reference List

Abc.net.au 2008, The Blogging Revolution, 4 September 2008, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2351985.htm

Coonan, C 2010, China defends control of web while praising freedom of speech, The Iris Times, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0610/1224272194198.html

Dinnick, W 2007, How free is Egyptian freedom of speech?, Abc news, viewed 14 June 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2981527&page=1

Popescu , L 2010, Help free jailed Syrian witer Raghdah Sa’id Hassan, Sampsonia way, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.sampsoniaway.org/blog/2010/06/05/help-free-jailed-syrian-writer-raghdah-sa’id-hassan/

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, 'Writing to communicate,' in Professional communication.

State.gov 2004, Saudi Arabia Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, U.S. Department of State, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27937.htm

ThinkQuest.org, Freedom of speech, viewed 14 June 2010, http://library.thinkquest.org/18355/freedom_of_speech.html