Global Voices Summit 2024: Where have all the bloggers gone?

‘I saw the space change entirely’

Originally published on Global Voices

On the first public day of the Global Voices Summit 2024, taking place in Kathmandu Nepal, a question relevant to the composition of the current digital landscape was asked: Where have all the bloggers gone? Twenty years ago, when Global Voices (GV) began, blogs were in their heyday. These independent, personal publishing platforms seemed destined to endure — at least until social networks and microblogging sites began to dominate. This, along with shifts in SEO algorithms and the movement of brands and media companies to co-opt blogs’ tone and style, resulted in individual bloggers growing less influential and their numbers dwindling.

In a lively conversation moderated by GV's co-founder Ethan Zuckerman, Nepal's first ever blogger, Dinesh Wagle; the woman behind India's Newsmericks blog, Aparna Ray; Filipino activist and former youth politician, Mong Palatino; and GV managing director Georgia Popplewell, from Trinidad and Tobago, who created the Caribbean's first podcast, discussed the evolution of their careers as bloggers, and whether the loss of blogs has left the online space poorer.

Zuckerman was the first to admit that blogging “holds a special place” in his heart. In 2004, when he and fellow GV co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon were visiting scholars at Harvard University, they happened upon BloggerCon and began to wonder whether blogs held the potential for facilitating global conversations. Their curiosity materialized into Global Voices, which, in its initial iteration, was essentially a blog aggregator that even managed to recruit a few bloggers, based in part on their knowledge of which blogs to follow. “Somewhere in the last 20 years,” Zuckerman explained, “blogs went from being a dominant online technology to being a fringe online technology.”

Blogging has changed over time, making the online space in which people are expressing themselves more valuable than ever. While not quite extinct, blogging manifests itself differently than it did two decades ago. What was it about blogs that made them so interesting and special? Were their charm and power connected to technology? A style of writing? The communities they managed to forge? And what have we lost — or gained — in the transition to present-day online platforms?

Different paths to blogging

In 2004, Wagle was a journalist in Nepal, covering technology, music and the arts. Stories that didn't quite fit in the mainstream media space in which he was operating went into the blog that he started. A year later, King Gyanendra threw the country into a political crisis when he declared a state of emergency, dismissed the government and seized political control. Newsrooms were temporarily shut down; when they were allowed to operate, soldiers were present.

Finally, once the internet was restored, people began to rely on blogs to voice their opinions. Coming together in an act of volunteerism, bloggers became integral in setting the political agenda in the country. Individuals were suddenly holding politicians accountable. On this collective mission for the purpose of restoring democracy, the link between blogging and journalism began to be established.

In contrast, Ray started her blog as a way of chronicling personal thoughts. Working at the intersection of social sciences, technology and innovation, she also found herself blogging about international development issues, blogging in Bangla, and finally, taking on the limerick format to provide clever commentary on news stories that would appeal to readers’ shrinking attention spans. For Ray, who joined GV in 2006 with a vision of bridge blogging, the format offered the opportunity to “understand people as people”: “Writing was the medium to be closer to each other and be a connected world.”

After a while, though, people began going to platforms like Instagram instead of blogs. “To express yourself,” Ray advises, “you have to get comfortable with the medium,” which became more visual as people turned to videos, and users began writing on Facebook groups and cross-posting their content.

‘Go where people are’

In 2004, long-form writing was the easiest content to create. By 2007, Twitter had arrived; smartphones would come slightly later. Bloggers were faced with a conundrum: follow their writer's instinct or follow people to the new platforms they were populating.

Ray says it's a double-edged sword. “We have to go where people are, but in short-format mediums, you can’t give context, and you can’t make the connection.” At the same time, she admits, writing alone also restricts the audience. Still, depth of information is important.

Palatino, who was one of the first to live tweet from parliament in the Philippines, says that the accessibility of blogging — and the interaction in the comment sections — were useful in amplifying voices, creating engaging content, attracting new audiences, and establishing connections. “It’s about community building,” he explains, especially in the context of the threat of disinformation and the challenge of access.

Part of blogging is about relationships and communities

So why have people stopped blogging? For Popplewell, part of the reason was that the landscape had changed. “The world that exists now is one I didn’t sign up for,” she says as she laughs. When she began Caribbean Free Radio, the Caribbean's first podcast, in 2005, the only realm the medium-agnostic producer and writer hadn't yet ventured into was sound. “I was caught by podcasting,” she says.

Pre-social media, Popplewell recalls, if you searched for Trinidad and Tobago or even the Caribbean, predictable images would come up: Carnival, beaches, certain genres of music, like calypso, soca and reggae. To her, podcasting represented a chance to diversify what her region looked like online. In the current digital space, there are now many more images of Carnival and beaches against the backdrop of engagement of a kind Popplewell does not want to participate in: “I saw the space change entirely.”

New spaces of inspiration

Zuckerman recalls blogging in the early 2000s as “a time of surprise and serendipity” that was about discovering and connecting with unexpected spaces. So, where are former bloggers getting their inspiration in the modern-day digital space?

For Ray, it's GV's Rising Voices (RV). In her country, India, which doesn't support TikTok, Ray says many younger people are expressing themselves in reels and on platforms like Substack and Instagram. “On social media, people express themselves,” she adds, “but I'm not so sure it’s the same thing [as blogging].”

For Wagle, whose social media habits are often dictated by his work, it's YouTube: “I'm trying to not allow algorithms to dictate what I see. I like to be in control.” In that vein, Zuckerman noted, “Blogs were not algorithmic.” A lot of the discovery that blogs used to offer via blog reels and simply by observing which other blogs your favorite bloggers subscribed to has now been handed over to algorithms, he said.

Palatino finds inspiration by reading GV every day. “You get more interested in what’s happening in different parts of the world,” he says. “It brings in new perspectives [which] is valuable. We can apply the mindset of other societies in solving our own problems.” As far as new Filipino voices go, Palatino follows his kids’ lead: “It is important to offer young people that space to voice opinions and [for us] to find where they are.”

Meanwhile, Popplewell says, much of the online conversation, at least in the English-speaking Caribbean, is still happening on Facebook, while young people are on TikTok, with much of the content being repurposed for Instagram via reels. “There is a lot of humor,” she says, and while these new platforms do not constitute a political space in the classic sense, commentary on gender relations and other pressing topics are being put forward in interesting, performative ways. “I'm impatient with it,” she admits, “but it’s there and fairly free-flowing.”

Addressing technological blind spots

Against this backdrop, how do members of the panel counteract their blind spots to make room for the emergence of media in different spaces? “It's hard to keep up,” Wagle admits, citing the new X/Twitter challenger Bluesky. “At one point, you have to try to find where people are, but also be driven by the self-interest of ‘Why?’”

While Ray is not completely comfortable with those platforms as “her space,” she says it's “important to recognize that things are changing, and to reach broader audiences, we have to change as well.”

‘The mission of GV is unchanged’

From the era of blogging occupying space at the intersection of personal and political expression to the diversity of the present-day digital space, how is the GV community adapting to this moment where people are still expressing themselves and taking political action, albeit in different formats?

Popplewell points to the fresh content being put out by Rising Voices (RV), a significant portion of which is in languages other than English. She calls the initiative “an epicenter for innovation.” RV produces a lot of video content, and the community demonstrates “an immense amount of talent and dynamism.”

In terms of broadening reach and amplification, Palatino believes “there will always be a need for a platform that provides context for readers.” One caveat, though: “You have to participate to be able to provide the framing.” It's important to be in these spaces, he believes, “and also to be in spaces where the intent is to manipulate information.”

Wagle agrees, having benefitted from the Global Voices platform, which gave him a global audience, even more so via translating his content into different languages and helping to shine a spotlight on marginalized groups.

“Given that everyone’s expressing [themselves] in short form,” Ray adds, “there's not a lot of room for explaining. It's more of a kind of knitting together from snapshots to offer a comprehensive understanding. [Global Voices] is knitting the whole fabric together.”

Written by Janine Mendes-Franco