“Some countries are conducive to the openness required in a successful blog. Others are less conducive.”  (pg. 115)

Chapter 8 of Naked Conversations discusses how some blogging patterns can be attributed to specific cultures (classified by country, region, characteristics or even spoken language). For example, Scoble and Israel said blogging is “exploding in the U.S., France and Japan but growing slowly in Germany, Russia and China.” They go on to explain why…open cultures vs. restricted or reserved cultures. Further, they said that “Spanish-speaking countries don’t blog.” And in Japan, they said, “it is extremely rare to find a blog that employs comments.” “Trackback is more polite.”

That said…would there be specific qualities typical of blogs from the Bahamas? Charged with the task of exploring the “blogosphere” from a country with the same letter as my name on GlobalVoicesOnline.org, I began reading to find out.

Given the Bahamian Islands’ proximity to Cuba, it was no surprise that many blogs were about issues surrounding Fidel Castro’s retirement and Cuba. CARICOM (Caribbean Community and Common Market), Carifesta (Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts), CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), PetroCaribe (Venezuelan oil alliance)–from a Barbados-based blog, climate change, elections, violence and “Globalisation” were among the many blog topics. The blogs were passionate, informative and insightful–and the comments were equally thoughtful. I learned quite a bit from these blogs. GlobalVoicesOnline.org is fascinating (I looked beyond just the Bahamas). I fully understand why readers across the globe turn to the blogosphere for relevant and “naked” news.