The trends of blogging seems to be in the hot fashion in Pakistan like all over the world and number of individuals are being witnessed to get connected with online journalism to spread news, information, images and opinions.
Thanks to technology that helped establish a number of number of youngsters, professionals and intellectuals – who have been engaged to express their words and thoughts with different styles and concepts through their blogs and different other digital tools.
As per estimates, blogs reach to at least 3.4 million Pakistanis. They have adopted diversified style as majority of them are spreading their thoughts through written expressions, some of them through pictures and rest of them through videos.
Yesterday, Microsoft organized a workshop to open a debate over various prevailing trends in the Pakistani blogging culture, its different aspects and the exclusive use of technology that make bloggers more credible, reliable and unique.
Shoaib Khalil, the moderator of the workshop, who is also Marketing Lead of Microsoft Pakistan said that “technological innovation, which previously allowed the mass distribution of news and information to large audience is now giving the same power of media outlets to individual as well.”
Couple of dozen bloggers and technology journalists were present in the discussion and shed light over strong and weak areas of blogging trends of Pakistan.
Though bloggers in Pakistan have built a strong reputation and credibility but could they be considered same as journalists in the mainstream media?
Journalists were of the view that despite of the fact, the bloggers are enthusiastic, creative and outstanding to express their freedom of speech through blogs and social media tools, like twitters, they are lacking credibility to being considered as digital or social media journalists.
They were of the view that this is because they are subjective with no regulative authority at all, mushrooming without any formal training of journalism. Therefore, they are not showing responsibility and expressing themselves haphazardly without any care of national interests and society norms.
It is due to fact that digital journalism or blogging is at infant stage in Pakistan with no training platforms available to them. However there are number of individuals who gained reputations from being stylist, argumentative and unique, getting limelight of the mainstream media and retain their positive authority and credibility among the readers.
The workshop emphasized that bloggers should act with responsibility and perceive the implications and fallouts of the words, photos and videos they spread to the masses.
There is a strong need to educate bloggers whether in the field of ethics and responsibility of journalism or in the field of monetizing themselves through use of technology with available solutions.
The digital journalism enables media to impart news instantly with low entry barriers through internet and computer networking technologies. It also provides bloggers and journalists with new avenues for writing genres and creative innovative landscape for 21st century.
The workshop concluded on the note that conventional media and social media are source of information and opinion alike though they are not equal and familiar with each other. The social media is also important for our society and youth as well and it will take time to get credibility among its readers.
