Bloody bloggered

As we know in Cairns, let alone around elsewhere, blogging is the new emerging face of journalisim that is, like it or not, changing the overall face and contribution to public debate.

As of September 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 106 million blogs. The role of blogs is becoming increasingly mainstream and often political.

There are new calls for a Blogger's Code of Conduct.

Linton Chiswick argues on The First Post that the blogs cannot be tamed - and offending postings are the price we pay for a free internet.

Here is his guide to ten bloggers of note...

1. War

Press-release.blogspot, a blog hosted by Google, has taken the Iraqi insurgency's media war to an English language audience, announcing regular news releases, including this one posted on April 10: "We're happy to announce this good news to all Muslims about the crash of two American Apache helicopters and killing its entire crew."

2. Animal cruelty

“It is true that many of the folk in France are evil, scheming peasants who like to poison each other’s dogs and such-like japes. It’s just like Dorset...” – Mark Brutton --> In March 2006 photographs were posted online of a young Chinese woman, dressed in fishnets and a cocktail dress, stamping a kitten to death in high heels. The Chinese web community was outraged. Within two weeks the 'glamorous kitten killer', as she was known, had been tracked down and her name, address, her job - as a nurse - and car registration number posted online. She went into hiding. Kitten snuff provokes outrage

3. Corporate spin

Retail giant Wal-Mart found itself at the centre of a storm of controversy when it emerged that a blog account of a couple's RV trip across America from Wal-Mart car park to Wal-Mart car park, and featuring 'interviews' with ecstatic Wal-Mart staff, was actually partly paid for by Wal-Mart itself and organised by their PR company, Edelman.

4. Misogyny

Vicious 'trolls' posting death threats and threats of sexual violence against programming expert and influential blogger Kathy Sierra, both on her blog and those belonging to other influential new media figures, forced Ms Sierra to cancel her appearance at the March 2007 ETech Conference after she decided it was too dangerous to leave home. Kathy and the dark side of the web

5. Bullying

A mobile phone video shot by schoolchildren and posted on YouTube.com showed a young teacher having his trousers whipped down in the classroom. It was one of several YouTube postings pointed up by Education Secretary Alan Johnson this month when he said cyber-bullying was becoming "cruel and relentless". He urged websites to remove offensive videos taken by pupils.

6. Promiscuity

“I can only conclude that these people are either extremely unlucky, unpleasant or unable to adapt to their new lives and simply trying to justify this inflexibility to themselves.” – John --> When a British expat blogger calling himself 'Chinabounder' boasted about his sexual exploits with local women in Shanghai, he so angered the Chinese that they threatened to castrate, and even kill him, in a tirade of abuse that spread across hundreds of websites in August 2006. He hit back in February 2007, accusing his tormentors of hypocrisy. The blogger who took on China

7. Political insult

A Birmingham Labour MP, Sion Simon, caused a political storm in the UK in October 2006 when he posted a video mocking David Cameron's Web Cameron blog, in which he portrayed the Conservative leader offering to give his children away and inviting viewers to sleep with his wife. A Blairite but not a yes-man

8. Libel

Two former colleagues of Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, the world's second-biggest advertising agency, found themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit over comments on an 'anonymous' blog which referred to Mr Sorrell as "Don Martino" and made allegations about criminal fraud, deception and money laundering. He settled for £120K in March 2007.

9. Workplace satire

In 2002, Heather 'Dooce' Armstrong was sacked after satirising her workplace online, introducing a brand new verb to the web community, to be 'dooced'. The neologism has come in handy to describe the legions of workers sacked for similar reasons, including Jessica Cutler, aka Washingtonienne, who lost her job as a congressional assistant after blogging about her sex life, and Catherine Sanderson, aka 'La Petite Anglaise', who was fired from her job at a Paris accountancy firm as a consequence of her blogging.

10. Sex

In January 2007 YouTube was in court over its repeated failure to remove a clip of the` ex-wife of Brazilian football star Ronaldo, supermodel Daniela Cicarelli, romping in the sea with Brazilian banker Renato Malzoni.