This Thursday (August, 31st) marks the second International Blog Day. Rebecca MacKinnon at the Global Voices site invites bloggers “to help people understand you and your region’s blogosphere better”. I think the Global Voices Project is a fascinating example of people from all around the World cooperating for a common goal. But most of them (us) are doing this with different motivation. So I’m very much looking forward to the see the feedbacks Rebecca’s questions will get.

I would also like take my own little part in this great event by answering the questions in the aforementioned GV Post. I’m not sure if these are particularly interesting to anyone else as I’m blogging from a relatively peaceful and small country. But as you will see from some of my answers, wondering about the importance of a post is mostly unnecessary and irrelevant . I found it interesting even just for myself to answer the below questions and realize ideas I haven’t consciously though of before.

I found that people outside Hungary sometimes have very strange picture of my country. I wanted to give a chance to authentic Hungarian voices (everyday common people who are bloggers) to gain a higher visibility through my humble translations. And via these voices to give a chance to interested visitors to see what the opinion of Hungarians is about various issues.

What do you blog about mainly?

It was very hard for me to choose topics in the beginning, because I wanted to identify issues that could be most interesting to visitors. I had to realize that I should not be (and can’t be) the one to decide what is interesting or not. If I find any topic where I think there should probably be blog entries about I go out and try to find these and edit them into a post to show different perspectives. This is why you can find entries on my site from politics to cross-cultural stories or even sports.

What motivates you to keep blogging even if (like most bloggers) you’re not paid much for it?

Huhh.. though question . I think I’m interested in the things I’m writing about and I don’t consider the time wasted even if it takes long (with the collection and translation) and even if I would be the only one to read the final published version. I think one of the strongest driving force for continuous blogging can originate from the fact whether you would write the stories even if you would know that none would ever read them. Looking at the gigantic number of blogs I’m pretty sure that there are many entries that are hardly ever read. If you accept this fact and can live with it, you won’t have problem keeping the pace. And occasionally you will receive some spotlight, but that will mostly always be out of your own control.

Is your audience mainly inside your own country or around the world?

As I see from the statistics my audience is generally from outside Hungary. This probably reflects my blog’s language (I do not post my entries in Hungarian, just English) as well as my initial reason of targeting entries mainly at the “outside World”.

What is the relationship between blogs in your country or region and the mainstream media?

Similarly (as far as I see) to most countries, MSM players do consider blogs too much. It is unfortunately mainly perceived just as a form of online personal life-journal, although many blogs are obviously much more than that.

When you blog, how would you describe what you write? Is it part of a conversation? Is it ranting?
Is it a daily diary? Is it journalism? Is it some or all of these things at different times? Does the definition matter?

I don’t know how to classify my entires. And I don’t think the definition really matters as long as the message goes through.

Have blogs started to have an impact on politics in your country? Have they started to influence what stories get covered in your country’s media? We’d love to know some examples.

Not too much that I know of. I wish they would. I think the only blog that received really high media visibility was the blog of the Hungarian Prime Minister. And I think that is not the kind of example you are looking for here . I anyone know a story I missed please leave a comment to this post .

I encourage everyone to visit the Global Voices site later this week when they publish the aggregated responses as I think we will see very interesting and various style replies to the above questions.

Tags:
BlogDay2006
Hungary