Everything Adrian

Following the LinkedIn course on WordPress, it would be interesting to understand how blogging is managed in other countries. Studies have been done on how blogging can be used in educational settings overseas to teach English as a foreign language. Two studies provide examples in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia respectively. 

In the Indonesian example, the students had access to an online tool called Blogger (3). Both web reviews from The Daily Egg and cybernews agree that Blogger (formerly known as Blogspot) is one of the oldest blogging platforms and a precursor to other platforms like WordPress.com and Zyro (2)(5). Blogger.com is an American company, implying that there is not a local alternative available that is more convenient. 

Researchers in Saudi Arabia focused on the effects of blogging in general and did not seem to use a specific program or website to conduct their study (2). This lack of specificity may indicate that Saudi Arabia is a country less concerned with regulating their internet, as the researcher did not seem to feel that the program, and the reputation and regulations that would come with it, mattered to the study at all. 

The United States itself has a law, Section 230, that blurs the line between publisher and carrier of content in order to recognize how the internet makes it easier for people to self-publish a large quantity of content of varying quality while protecting publishers from taking responsibility for user’s posts (4). Other countries like Germany, the United Kingdom, and Brazil all have various laws regulating what content is punishable on the internet and who holds the blame, but none come close to being as lenient as the United State’s Section 230.

Bibliography:

1. Alsamadani, Hashem A. “The Effectiveness of Using Online Blogging for Students’ Individual and Group Writing” International Education Studies, vol. 11, no.1, Canadian Center of Science and Education, December 22, 2017. doi:10.5539/ies.v11n1p44. 

• Another perspective on teaching English as a foreign language. The study observed undergraduates in a university in Saudi Arabia to understand how working individually on blogging assignments compared to working in a group of other students. 

2. Eggspert, Today’s, and Rockey Simmons. “Blogger Review – the Good and the Bad for 2022.” The Daily Egg, Crazyegg, 13 July 2022, https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/blogger-review/ Links to an external site.

• This source contained a review that was useful for gaining background information on Blogger.com when synthesized with Cybernews’s review. 

3. Fithriani, Rahmah, et al. “Integrating Online Blogging into EFL Writing Instruction: Exploring Students’ Perceptions” Proceedings of the UNNES International Conference on English Language Teaching, Literature, and Translation (ELTLT 2018), Atlantis Press, 2019/06. doi.org/10.2991/eltlt-18.2019.17 

• This is a report on a successful example of teachers using online blogging as a method to deepen Indonesian students’ understanding of written English.

4. Goldman, Eric, “An Overview of the United States’ Section 230 Internet Immunity” (December 1, 2018). The Oxford Handbook of Online Intermediary Liability (Giancarlo Frosio, ed.) (Forthcoming), Santa Clara Univ. Legal Studies Research Paper, Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3306737

• This source goes over the history of responsibility of free speech on the internet. It describes Section 230 and compares other approaches from other countries. The source is a useful guide to the context of what can and cannot be published on the internet and who becomes responsible for the content of a post. 

• Before the law was introduced, court rulings set a concerning precedent. Content hosts were encouraged to moderate their customers’ content but by doing so they entered the risk of large repercussions if they made one mistake. It was much safer to auto-moderate or not moderate at all and claim they had no knowledge of the content to avoid all risk. Section 230 was designed to fix this extreme dichotomy.  

• Section 230 fixes this by defining a legal middle ground between traditional publishers and their carriers, recognizing that those structures are more blurred in the digital world as more users have access to more ways to publish their work with less cost. 

5. Hiley, Catherine. “Blogger Review 2022 – Is It Still Worth Your Attention? | Cybernews.” Cybernews, 11 Oct. 2022, https://cybernews.com/best-website-builders/blogger-review/

• This source contained a review that was useful for gaining background information on Blogger.com when synthesized with The Daily Egg’s review.