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Bringing out the best in VN’s bloggers...
The Thao Van Hoa (Sports and Culture) Newspaper has launcheda writing competition entitled "Your Entry – The Life Around Us" tocreate a playground for Vietnamese bloggers to test their writing skills andshare their thoughts and feelings about social issues and everyday life. This isseen as an acknowledgement of the role of blogging as a means of expressiondespite the many controversies surrounding its validity, accuracy, legal statusand inability to be controlled.
While this undeniably powerful medium continues to increase inpopularity around the world, including here in Viet Nam, organisers hopecontests like this will help persuade bloggers to write healthier and morequality content.
According to Le Khac Hiep, the head of Viet Nam CommunicationJoint Stock Company and a contest juryman, his busy schedule gobbles up most ofhis time but he nevertheless joyfully spends hours surfing and reading theentries of his partners and relatives.
"Apart from expressing the blogger's daily life in diaryform, many entries show remarkably deep insight into current issues. Others dealwith the nature of humanity and relationships in our society," says Hiep.
24 year old Tran Thanh Van, a resident of Ton Duc Thang, saidshe would definitely enter the competition because publishing her own stories,poems and experiences has become the daily habit in the last two years.
"Many amateur writers spend great efforts to craft theirblogs into real works of art, changing colour schemes and decorating the pageswith lovely images and icons," says Van, adding that "some bloggersare very talented writers, so holding the competition is ideal for people likeme."
Van is not alone in expressing her innermost thoughts andfeelings to the whole world. Nguyen Viet Linh, an overseas student in England,also shares her weekly diary with the cyberworld.
"Whenever I feel lonely and homesick, I write a new entryand receive warm feedback from both friends and strangers. It motivates me tokeep studying, and I know that there's real love between people incyberspace," says Linh.
Apart from being a private website, blogging has developed intoa new kind of journalism that could be called the ‘everyman's newspaper',especially in certain parts of the world where traditional media is controlledby the government or multinational corporations.
Joseph Ruelle (Joe), a Canadian immigrant familiar to many asthe MC of VTV6 and a writer for Lao Dong (Labour) Newspaper, writes ablog which is very popular due to his precise observations and humorous use ofVietnamese expressions.
"The free style and impartiality of bloggers make bloggingmore attractive than more official forms of press and literature," saysJoe.
Blogging has become so rampant, it's even been adopted by thePresidential House. Duong Trung Quoc, the general director of the Association ofVietnamese Historians and editor-in-chief of Xua Va Nay (Now and Then)magazine, was the first Vietnamese politician to set up a blog. He is well-knownat home and abroad for his research on national history and culture and believesthat blogging can be a useful tool linking him with those interested in theactivities of National Assembly deputies.
Blogging evolved in the mid 90's from internet bulletinboards, internet forum threads, and email lists. Ever since the term ‘blog'was coined in 1999 by Peter Merholz as an abbreviation of ‘web log', theblogosphere has grown into one of the most popular alternative to the mainstreammedia as a means of communication.
Acording to the Ministry of Information and Communication, therewere an estimated three million bloggers in Viet Nam in 2007, and tens ofthousands of new blogs are set up each day. As one person can write multipleblogs with multiple purposes, network managers get headaches trying to keeptrack.
Considered to be private property, a blog can be used to makestatements about other people and ‘flame wars' often erupt between bloggers,sometimes over the most esoteric of details. Worse, blogs are a very effectivetool to run smear campaigns against others.
Mi Van, the young model often found in the pages of numerousyouth magazines, was forced to shut down her online diary for a month due todisturbing comments on a fake blog. The famous dancer Linh Nga was equally upsetover a false blog which was set up using her identity. And recently, pop singerPhuong Thanh sued a blogger nicknamed Co Gai Do Lon g for slander; she lost thecase but has lodged an appeal.
Recently, Yahoo managers stopped service to the well-knownblogger OnlyU (who received 2 million page views a day) after sending a warningletter to the owner due to numerous complaints of offensive material, sexualcontent, and the spreading of false information about famous people negativelyaffecting their careers and lives.
"I never spoke ill of others. All the entries includedimages and witnesses, and unconfirmed rumours were always questioned",claims OnlyU, adding bitterly, "I don't think that Yahoo's terms ofservices were violated; the service suppliers shouldn't have deleted all of myentries."
Tac Ke, another famous blog with the same numbers of page views,disseminates the same content on multiple sites, both to attract more readersand to avoid OnlyU's fate.
"They must have nothing better to do so they stick theirnoses in other people's affairs. I don't bother with all that," saysVan.
"I often bypass bad blogs and move to more interestingsites," adds Linh.
Blogs have moved beyond their origins; no longer strictlypersonal web logs, many believe it's time to control their contents. The truthis however, it's virtually impossible to control bloggers because they canremain anonymous, change their identities, or simply create new ones.
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