Browsing through the American Libraries Journal of Sept. 2007, in the section of Information Technology, I came across the article “Free and Freedom, They’re Not the Same Thing.” This is an interesting topic but what it has to do with technology? Well, the columnist discusses the issue of intelectual freedom, the impact of the internet and the freedom of expression that the Web has allowed to everyone, especifically through the use of blogs to express and debate our views in a democratic way. The question that the columnist posted was “do they [blogs] really allow freedom of expression? As he compares the columnist as a journalist without the inconvenient restrictions of integrity, accuracy, fairness, and professionalism; he realizes how serious he takes his role of journalist when blogging. He also presents the point that information can be digitally recorded forever and that it should also be considered that the speech that we freely express can be in some way, sometime challenged.
The article concludes stating how blogs are becoming part of the search results of information available through the internet and how databases like EBSCO and LexisNexis include blogs as part of their news indices. Forseeing into the future of how blogging is becoming part of journalism, the author of the article mentions that blogs might sometime be nearly indistinguishable from editorials in search rank. In relation to the great number and variety of blogs available he says that, “there is a lot of freedom out there and most of it is freely available–the blogosphere is intellectual freedom writ large, but we must sacrifice a little security for that kind of freedom.”
After reading this article I realized how important is that we all that are participate in one form or another in the blogosphere should also take this role seriously and be aware to use our freedom of expression in a proper way.
Thank you for this insightful post! I have often had similar thoughts about blogs and the freedom of expression.
When my students are researching, they often want to use blogs they find through Internet searches as primary sources. While some blogs are extremely professional, well-researched, or factual, there are also many bloggers who just spout off their opinions or relay fictitious information. While this is a great lesson for web site evaluation, so many of my students would rather skip this evaluative step and just use the information they are presented with.