December 26th, 2008
The Top Five Newsworthy Events in the Indian Blogosphere in 2008
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Earlier today, I had suggested that Global Voices and Desipundit lead the effort to create a ‘State of the Indian Blogosphere 2009‘ collaborative report. Going by the positive reaction to the idea, it seems that the report will happen in one form or another.
To start things off, here is a list of the top five newsworthy events in the Indian blogosphere in 2008 –
1. Citizen journalism played an important role in covering the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack.
Citizen journalism came to age in India during the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack.
Several bloggers posted first hand updates during the three day crisis (Amit Varma, Sonia Faleiro, Rahul Bhatia, Arun Shanbhag), several others live-blogged reactions on legacy media news, and some of us played the role of curators (Global Voices, DesiPundit, Mumbai Help, Dina Mehta, Gauravonomics).
Almost a month after the Mumbai terror attack, Indian bloggers continue to discuss the tragedy and many observers believe that this engagement will continue till the 2009 Indian general elections.
2. Corporate blogging and, even CEO blogging, made a tentative start in India.
In 2008, several Indian companies — like Infosys, Tata Interactive Systems, Wipro, Frito Lay, Mahindra and Tata Motors — embraced corporate blogging. Even software industry body NASSCOM has a blog.
Not only that, several Indian CEOs — like Rajeev Karwal, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Vineet Nayar, B.G. Mahesh and Rajesh Jain — started (or restarted) blogging themselves.
Several Indian web 2.0 startups and ad agencies are also blogging regularly. Finally, several influential Indian business bloggers, who write about topics as diverse as marketing, technology, human resources and finance, have developed significant Indian and international audiences.
For more: See Abhijeet Mukherjee & Moinak Mitra in The Economic Times, Vishal Datta in the Economic Times, Arun Jayan in The Indian Express, Kamla Bhatt, Corporate Blogging in India by Rajeev Karwal, Apu.
3. Celebrity blogging introduced the Indian mainstream to blogging.
Several Indian celebrities started no holds barred personal blogs in 2008. These included actors Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan and Gulshan Grover, actresses Gul Panang, Shilpa Shetty, Bipasha Basu and Revathy, directors Karan Johar and Ram Gopal Varma, cricketer Ravi Shastri and model turned writer Shobha De (directors Shekhar Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap were already blogging). Even actors Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan started a blog, although their blogs were really campaigns. Social networking site Big Adda, which hosts Amitabh Bachchan’s blog, also designed a microblog for him (Economic Times).
As expected, these blogs attracted a lot of attention and created a lot of controversy. I’m sure that these celebrity blogs were the first introduction to blogging for many Indians and I won’t be surprised to see more celebrity blogs in 2009.
For more, see Rajiv Dingra at WATBlog, Harshil Karia at WATBlog, GreatBong, Shobha De and Shekhar Kapoor in TOI, Soumitra Das in TOI, Shubha J Rao in The Hindu, Shabina Akhtar in The Telegraph.
4. Indian bloggers become book authors.
Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan’s first novel ‘You Are Here’ was published by Penguin. Amit Varma’s first novel ‘My Friend, Sancho‘, which will be published by Hachette India in early 2009, made it to the long list of the Man Asian Literary Prize for 2008.
Book publishers also encouraged bloggers to aspire to appear in print by running contests like the Harper Collins/ Oxford Bookstore e-Author contest and the Penguin Books/ Sulekha Blogprint contest.
Finally, excerpts from Indian blogger Mayank Austen Soofi’s blog on Pakistan are doing to be included in a class XI textbook by The Oxford University Press in Karachi.
For more: See Arcopol Chaudhuri in DNA, Khuswant Singh in The Tribune, Amrit Dhillon in The Telegraph, Shruti Sabharwal & Sushmita Mohapatra in The Economic Times, Indian Express.
5. Group blog Mutiny.in started a print version.
Indian group blog Mutiny.in, which calls itself “India’s thought terminus” started a monthly print version, Mutiny Print, which includes a selection of the best posts from the blog (see announcement post).
For more: See Rishabh at WATBlog.
What do you think? What have I missed? What were the top five most newsworthy events in the Indian blogosphere in 2008 according to you?
Update: There are two ways to make a list like this. You can focus on the newsworthy events that were written about in the Indian blogosphere, like Global Voices does as part of its year end review. Or, you can focus on events in which the Indian blogosphere itself became newsworthy, which I do in this list.
Sometimes, there may be some overlap between the “blogging about news” and “news about blogging” lists, but, often, there isn’t any. For instance, there is only one overlapping topic in the two lists (the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack).
It’s interesting to think about the merits, demerits and appropriateness of these two distinct approaches of thinking about user generated media.
[...] 2: I have written a quick post on the top five themes and memes in the Indian blogosphere in 2008 to kick off the initiative. It’s your turn [...]
How could you miss Digital Inspiration (http://www.labnol.org). It is India’s leading tech blog. Also Mutiny, though is a great effort, does not scale up as much to be listed amongst the top 5. The kind of thoughtwork and brainstorming at Mutiny is very streamlined (to some extent emotion driven also) and does not convey both sides of the coin.
Also, the outgoing year has seen a massive increase in the no. of female bloggers particularly from the subcontinent. And i feel, it is a really healthy and promising development, which oughta be listed side-by-side with teh top ones.
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Hi Gaurav,
I have written about the Biggest moments in Indian Blogging history here.
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2008/12/simpleguide-to-biggest-moments-in.html
Before that in Feb 2008 I wrote a three part series on Citizen Journalism in India. Cross posted on Journalism.co.uk site.
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2008/02/state-of-citizen-journalism-in-india_9328.html
Hope it helps.
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@Pramit: Thanks for your post. I was compiling a list of the top ten milestones in Indian blogging and your post reminded me to include some milestones I would have otherwise left out.
Recently, I also gave a long interview on citizen journalism in India that will appear in the Sunday edition of Mail Today. I’ll use inputs from your series to expand that posts as well.
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@Prakhar: I wasn’t compiling a list of the most influential Indian blogs here, but a list of the most newsworthy events in the Indian blogosphere in 2008. A group blog starting a monthly print edition is certainly news to me, even if it wasn’t news to many others.
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Gaurav,
Thanks a lot for giving Mutiny this recognition. I guess we don’t have enough contacts in the Mainstream Media for this to be on the news
@Prakhar
I am absolutely glad to see your critical review of Mutiny Print. Mutiny is about providing a platform to Indian Bloggers to go print. It’s a magazine which is going to be one of its kind for the simple reason that its a democratic publication. Mutiny is carrying the free speech, individual-turning-publisher spirit of blogs forward to print. Emotional or not, if an Indian wants to make an opinion which is relevant to the nation at large and is not unconstitutional, we respect that, Mutiny is the place for all such opinions.
A lot has gone behind it. We have got Mutiny registered as a Pvt Limited Media company. We also got an RNI (Registrar of Newspapers of India) registration. The ISSN number is just about to be alloted. All this happened without having any full time team. Mutineers from across the globe have been contributing their time and resources to build it bit by bit, none of who are being paid a penny. We don’t have advertisers yet, we don’t have VCs. Whatever money Mutiny makes through the online Ads or print subscription amount goes back in maintaining the site and printing cost. Needless to say this is purely non profit for there is not even a scope to make profit, yet.
We understand a lot more needs to be done and that’s where such critical review matters and helps us to grow. Please do send in more of your suggestion to me at sanjukta @ mutiny . in
Gaurav,
Sorry for taking the space to talk about Mutiny.
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[...] Mishra at Gauravonomics digs into the Indian Blogosphere to find the top five events in 2008, in which the Indian [...]
Mainstream blogging is going mainstream media way, metro focussed ,urban utopia and offers what attracts maximum clicks(read TRP for popular media).
Who cares for the effort of few which saved lives of millions in Bihar during flood relief ? More than 22 districts (almost equivalent to the population of Australia) was badly affected but focus continues to be on glam events.But yes people continue to talk about digital divide every now and then
I find most of the bloggers equally desperate to get featured in mainstream media
reminds me of the good old story we read in school “akbaar mein naam”
Pramit - thanks for mentioning about flood relief efforts.
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@Sanjukta: My pleasure.
@Ajit: Blogging is so fragmented that I don’t even know what a mainstream blog is, anywhere, but especially in India. Certainly, with less than 1000 subscribers, and less than 20000 unique visitors per month, my blog is hardly mainstream.
Legacy media and participatory media has an interesting two way dynamics. Participatory media, including blogging, is most effective when we are able to push up important stories into mainstream media. That’s an element that is common to almost every single item in this list of the biggest moments in citizen journalism. Working by itself, the reach and effectiveness of participatory media is quite limited, especially in India. So, yes, in the context of citizen journalism or citizen activism, it’s critical that the story or the cause breaks through into legacy media, and it’s important for bloggers to be media savvy.
As for the Bihar floods, what can I say? I spent seventeen years in Bihar, and my parent still live in Patna, but I don’t consider it home anymore. I was aware of the blogging initiative during the Bihar floods, but didn’t really follow the story, until now. This post was supposed to be the starting point in a conversation and it will be great if you could point me to a post which summarizes the initiative.
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Be it participative media or traditional media, the idea is to disseminate, analyze and have a positive impact on the issues which affects us.
Collaborative, participative media or citizen journalism is not just about recycling( read cross posting) what is already in public domain, it’s about how people individual or collectively strive to bring out issues which are often overlooked or ignored due to various vested interest of mainstream media. The problem is that most of the content which gets circulated in name of participative media is most often generated by legacy media.
Our effort was truly “participative” act of citizen journalism, as it has a positive impact on the lives of people. It was not confined to recirculation what mainstream media was already churning out. Mainstream media covered our efforts since we had used technology to carry out a life saving mission.You can go through the blog for more details.
Regarding Bihar – What can I say !! It’s your personal choice. I have also spent 18-19 years of my life in Patna/Bihar and I sincerely believe that “you can take a Bihari out of Bihar but can’t take the Bihari out of him” . I say this with great pride and gratitude to the place of my birth and ancestors. Being Bihari is as much part of me being Indian and although we have multiple identities, this is one identity which has helped me to retain my “sanskar”.
Unfortunately many take pride in disassociating themselves with their Bihari identity due to varied reasons. This is my view is the primary cause of the “Bihari” identity getting misrepresented and maligned as the “haves” choose to indentify and wear more acceptable “hats” than that of a Bihari and that why I call them the Harry’s of the world who are uncomfortable when being reminded of being born as “Hari”. Nothing personal , it’s a general tendency that I have observed and despise it for obvious reasons.
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@Ajit: I know the “Harry” vs “Hari” story by heart. I can see that you have some strong views on this topic and I respect those views, even though I don’t necessarily share them.
I have been going though your blog and it’s a shame I haven’t seen it so far. Great work.
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Much appreciated Gaurav.
You are right, I have strong views, guess because I’m passionate about the cause and take ownership of responding to the challenges. I believe in taking action rather than castigate and alienate from the issues of ground. To drive things on ground (from Chicago) you do need strong conviction. When we initiated our efforts in 2004, most of us were labeled us insane for obvious reasons since no one believed us. Having said that, I also believe that our generation has to take better ownership of the issue. I’m just doing my part, not sure how far reaching and how effective it has been.
Respect your POV as well, it’s our conscience which drives us, so let’s just be ourselves.
Thanks again.
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[...] in my post on the top five newsworthy events in the Indian blogosphere in 2008, I had written about Indian group blog Mutiny.in starting a monthly print version, Mutiny Print, [...]