anthroblogia

How many Malaysian blogs are there?

nospam@example.com (julian) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:19:55 +0000

A recent statement by the Malaysian Information, Communication and Culture Minister - Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim (Dewan Rakyat: 2 Million Bloggers Proof Of Media Freedom In Country) affirmed that there are two million bloggers in Malaysia.

I wish I knew where he got that figure – with a population of more than 26m, that would mean that about 7.7% of Malaysians are bloggers. Although I do think that blogs are proportionately more popular in Malaysian than many other countries, I have my doubts about this figure, especially since, of course, not all Malaysians access the internet. In December 2009 there was 31.4% penetration of broadband (Broadband penetration rate surpasses 2009 target), and in June 2009, internet penetration was 64.6% (for more information, many useful stats are available at the Digital Media across Asia site). 64.6% of Malaysians means about 16.6m people. If two million were bloggers, that would mean 12% of Malaysian internet users are bloggers.

As a researcher of Malaysian blogs, I have long wanted accurate statistics on the overall Malaysian blogosphere, but eventually came to the conclusion that it is very difficult, if not impossible to get them. In a nutshell, these are the problems:
• Most Malaysian bloggers use platforms such as Blogger, and Wordpress. These are hosted in the US (I think, but not in Malaysia anyway). Most Malaysian bloggers in my experience do state their location in their profile, but not all. So, a crawl of these sites that picked up profile information would capture many of the Malaysian bloggers, but not all. I suspect this is what Sysomos did recently.
• The more serious bloggers usually have their own domain. Hosting is a lot cheaper with American or European companies. Hence the core of Malaysian dedicated bloggers will have their blog hosted outside of Malaysia. And their blogs will not be picked up in crawls of .blogspot blogs, etc.
• Many bloggers have more than one blog. Some will have many blogs. Many of these will be inactive. Any survey of blogs needs to have some measure of how active they are – for example by deciding that one post in the last three months means the blog is active.
• Private blogs (with password protection) cannot be crawled (thanks to Tim Highfield for this point).
• A proper survey of Malaysian blogs needs to look for blogs in English, Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese (Mandarin), and Tamil (this is probably the easiest problem to overcome).

A social network analysis map of blogs from Malaysia

Here is a little survey of figures/estimates of the population of the Malaysian blogosphere that I have come across.

June 2010
A survey by Sysomos gives some idea of the relative popularity of blogs in Malaysia, but as I blogged about before, without more details on their methodology this survey is not reliable. As it stands, it implies that there were either 1.7m blog posts from Malaysia when the survey was done, or 1.7m bloggers. Maybe this is where the Rais got his data from?

October 2009
Around the time of the Nuffnang Awards, Nuffnang said in a press release it had registered “more than 100,000 blogs hosted on various platforms”, and the Singapore Co-Founder said in a radio interview that they had 40K blogs registered in Singapore. A bit of informed guesswork on my part leaves 50K blogs registered with Nuffnang in Malaysia.

In the survey I did last year (myBlogS 2009), about 36% of the blogger respondents were registered with Nuffnang or Advertlets. Taking that as a benchmark, my guesstimate of active blogs in Malaysia is 150-200,000 blogs.

April 2009
The Young Asians survey by Synovate was reported as showing that “Malaysian youth are active bloggers with close to half (48%) spending a portion of their time blogging.” This refers to those aged between 8-24 years old. One could extrapolate from that how many young bloggers there are, but I don't have an equivalent breakdown of the age of Malaysians.

April 2008
A newspaper article quoted Dr Abu Hassan Hasbullah from University Malaya saying there are 500,000 active bloggers in Malaysia (Blogging in Malaysia ranks among highest in the world). There were no more details on the research, and I tried contacting the person quoted, but to no avail.

September 2007
Some research based on Microsoft’s ‘Windows Live Spaces’ (Research confirms boom in Malaysia’s blogging scene) said that “41% of Malaysians […] own a blog account” – but this is probably 41% of the respondents, and the total number of Malaysian respondents is not known. A good critique that I read at the time (but can’t track it down) noted that the Windows Live Spaces blogs at the time had a blog as a default option, and that selecting the option did not mean the blog was active. It was also pointed out that Microsoft had an interest in promoting their new blogging service.

July 2003
The Great Malaysian Blog List had 393 blogs listed, and the “VOI Blog Directory” had 567 blogs listed. There may have been overlap between these, and overall perhaps less than 1000 Malaysian blogs at the time.

If anyone has more accurate data on the number of blogs in Malaysia I would love to hear from you! For the moment I will stick with my estimate of 150-200 thousand active blogs. But I wonder how come I am estimating so much less than all the other sources, and I could be way off the mark.

Which country blogs the most?

nospam@example.com (julian) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:48:41 +0000

Just some thoughts on a international report on blogging by sysomos I saw today (blog post here). I’m always really interested in international comparisons of blogging, but this one - based on the methodological details they give anyway - is not as useful as I hoped.

To be fair, they are also faced with the perennial problem which is not knowing the total population (of blogs) and therefore whatever sample is taken, it can ultimately only be said to represent itself. And I don't know their precise way of collecting data, which may have taken into account some of the critiques outlined below. So I'd love to hear from anyone with more details on the data sampling and so on.

• It says "Over 100 million blog posts analyzed" - this does not mean the same as 100 million blogs. For example, I have about 291 blog posts on my blog. Measuring blog posts alone would favour countries that have an older blogging population; and also blogs that have permalinked posts (most do, but not all). So, I wonder how they identified individual blogs.

• They also say that "a third of blog posts are from the U.S." If the total bloggers are 29.2% from the US, and the blog posts are 33.3% - then that means each blogger has on average a bit more than one post each. Which would make sense if they have taken a 'snapshot' of the blogosphere I suppose - i.e over one day or something. But it still raises questions in my mind - that would mean on one day almost 10% (see chart below) of Americans were blogging/had a blog (assuming one blog per person, which is not always the case). Which seems like a lot.

• How did they identify blogs? Is it based on url - e.g. those on the blogspot or Wordpress domains, or perhaps identifying the software used (e.g. Wordpress, or Serendipity)? What happens to blogs on self hosted domains? Could this introduce a bias - for example - against certain countries or languages (e.g. China)?

• They say "We analyzed more than 100 million blog posts that provided information about their age, gender and location information." I would have some questions here too:

**When they say "blog posts", does that include the sidebar information, or just the blog post?
For example: a blog post (such as this) may have the words: "I love living in Malaysia, because I am a man who loves good food, and when you’re over forty like me, good food is important." Or, the blog post may have nothing revealing in it, but on the side bar the profile says: "Male, Malaysia, Age: 40". If you're counting all the sidebars, that's a lot of duplicates.

**Perhaps the location data is based on some IP address analysis? I don’t know how that would work, but if they could work out where the last update was done from, that would be a good bet. Otherwise, many blogs are hosted in the US, but belong to people outside (i.e. all those on blogspot, etc.)

• Anyway. A final thing. I was interested to see that Malaysia ranked 14th in the number of blog posts. Which is not bad for a smallish Asian country. But I thought it would be interesting to get some idea of the proportionate number of blog posts - because America has a population of about 310m, so it’s not surprising there is more blog activity. So here are a couple of tables (population figures taken from the CIA World Factbook)

The first table is derived from sysomos; and I have assumed the total number of blog posts was 100 million, from where I get the "Putative no. of blog posts" per country

Then, dividing the blog posts by population, we get the proportion of blog posts to the population - giving us in theory the ranking of the countries where blogging is the most popular

So according to this - Sweden is at the top, and Malaysia comes first in Asia! (OK I dunno why China isn’t in there either, maybe they can't search in Chinese?)

Confinement as brainwashing?

nospam@example.com (julian) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:28:28 +0000

Just a rapid thought, between nappies and other reproductive tasks

The practice of postpartum (i.e. after the birth) confinement is common in Malaysia, and basically means that after the birth the mother is confined to the home, or a room, and has to eat certain foods, follow certain practices (such as not bathing), and so on. For more information on the Chinese version try: "Zuo Yue", Chinese Postpartum Confinement?, and ‘Doing the month’: Ancient tradition meets modern motherhood.

Anyway, the principle seems fine: the mother is able to rest and recuperate, concentrate on getting breastfeeding going and learning how to deal with the baby. Some traditions may have made sense once upon a time: e.g. no bathing for a month - imagine in a rural setting, water can be dirty, it has to be fetched, and someone suggested to us that it was also a suitable 'contraceptive' to keep the lusty husband at bay!

But others - such as a diet very low on vegetables and fruit, high on meat, ginger (thought to exacerbate jaundice in newborns) and herbs - does not make sense. Especially the no fruit and veg for the first ten days (or something like that).

Also: being confined. Literally sometimes. A friend of a friend had to stay in one room for thirty days! Not allowed out. Now that's a good way to induce postpartum depression if you ask me!

Anyway, back to the title. Being confined to a room for a month is a form of sensory deprivation. Coupled with the high stress of dealing with a newborn, the lack of sleep, and a different diet, it could actually be said to resemble a 'brainwashing' programme. Maybe, that is one function of confinement - a liminal period that realigns the mother as an extension of the child, enforcing her subsidiary role as reproductive organ rather than autonomous individual.

Just a thought...

Magazine article - Off the Edge

nospam@example.com (julian) — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:48:24 +0000

Just a quick one to post a scanned copy of an article I had published in Off the Edge last month - it's about blogs in Malaysia and the future of blogs in general, hope you enjoy it - click here for a pdf.

Charlie is here!

nospam@example.com (julian) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:39:29 +0000

At last we have our baby, from inside the womb to outside in the real world with us

He was born last Friday, 23 April, at 7.34am, and here is a quick account of it all. It's the first time I've been able to properly sit at the computer since he came, and he may wake up soon anyway.

WW was given pitocin to induce labour on Thursday at about 21.30. The doctor recommended inducing him as he was already officially 'term' (i.e. ready to come out) at 38 weeks +, and the amniotic fluid had been relatively low (aka 'oligohydramnios') for the previous four weeks. Actually, the need to induce for low fluid is debatable (see the conclusions of this medical article, or this one), but we went ahead with it, as he had a good weight anyway. Actually those articles mostly say that it should not be routinely done, but it's difficult sometimes to argue with a doctor... The whole pregnancy thing is a bit scary sometimes, and in the end one is just worried about getting the baby out safely, and the mother being safe too.

The midwife told me to go home and sleep, and to come back the next morning at 7, but things progressed quicker and I got a call at 2.30 to come in as the waters had broken already. When I got there at about 3, I could hear WW screaming in pain from down the corridor; the epidural was in the process of being put in, and the pain was still intense in spite of the pethidine she'd had earlier. Actually, that's one problem with inducing birth by using pitocin, it makes the pain more intense. Here are a page from childbirth.org about the pros and cons of pitocin, and one from the NHS about its possible effects on mother-child bonding and lactation.

We had decided to try to do as natural a birth as possible, but the epidural really helped. For the next 3 hours or so she dozed on and off, with the midwife monitoring the cervix size, contractions, and foetal heartbeat regularly. When the cervix had expanded enough, the midwife cut the epidural as she explained that WW needed to feel the pain a bit more to help her 'feel the need' for pushing (or something like that). Although the epidural in theory only stops the pain, but does not affect muscle control, it seems that it does interfere somewhat with the natural process, and the ability of the mother to react appropriately.

The final stage started at about 6.30. The doctor came in, and the midwife and 2-3 nurses were there too. I sat at the edge and tried to encourage WW as much as possible. Soon we could see some of Charlie's hair sticking out, and as she pushed more, his head slowly appeared bit by bit. Surprisingly, WW wasn't doing all of the screaming and swearing that I had been expecting But I guess that's just because she was really focused on getting things right.

With each contraction, she had to push (as if you're doing a number two, the doctor kept saying), and maintain the push for as long as possible. Once she relaxed, you could see Charlie's head slipping back a bit. The midwife was pushing hard down on her stomach, and the nurses joined in a chorus of 'Push! Push! Some more somemore somemore!' I found that I managed to help by telling WW how far Charlie was out, and showing her with my hands around my head. Actually, a mirror would really have helped, so that the mother can see what is happening - it was really obvious how even a short break in the pushing would let the baby slip back a bit. Kind of like trying to squeeze the last toothpaste out of a tube, and the paste slips back when you relax your hold a bit.

And, then, suddenly his whole head came out. He was facing up (not the best position), and it was amazing to see his face all squashed up sticking out 'down there'. One more push and he all slipped out!

This picture is just after he came out, and you can see how blue he was. The medical team cut the cord and rushed him to the weighing station etc. I followed them and I was so scared when I saw how blue he was, and not moving. They pumped air into his lungs, extracted mucus from the lungs, rubbed his feet and chest. I guess it was a short time, but I was freaking out like crazy in my mind! But then, in a classic cliche, his first weak cry pierced the air, and my heart, and I almost cried with relief. I guess it must have showed because afterwards the doctor asked if I was OK.

But his breathing was still a bit dodgy - he was 'grunting' (that's the official term I think, but it sounded more like 'grinding' to me) and his chest was jerking irregularly, and after letting WW hold him a little, they brought him up to the nursery to put him under an oxygen tent thing, and monitored the oxygen saturation level in his blood (some info on Neonatal respiratory distress syndrome).

Fortunately, he was doing better in a couple of hours and WW could try to breastfeed him (breastfeeding is not as obvious as you would think it is, but it's important start trying to breastfeed as soon as possible, ideally in the first hour)

So when the grandparents, relatives and godmother first arrived, they could only look at him through the viewing window of the nursery.

A couple more hours of observation, and his oxygen saturation levels were normal. The paediatrician said that he had had probably just had a little excess mucus in his lungs - and he was cleared to be able to come to our room

So, there is our little bundle of joy. He's five days old today, and we love him to bits.

Intermittent blogging ahead...

nospam@example.com (julian) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:58:24 +0000

Sticky post. Scroll down for the most recent post

Thanks for dropping by

I am now in the process of writing up my PhD (and soon to be a father), and will only be able to do very intermittent updates of this blog for an indefinite period. Please explore the tags and archives (below right) for posts about my research on blogs in Malaysia, or you can get an idea of what I'm doing by reading Anthroblogology - Monetisation in the Malaysian Blogosphere.

On the tags above you can read more About Me, or Contact me if you like.

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