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Tim Harford and Pablo Halkyard from the World Bank comment on internet blogs.

Will blogs change development thinking?

Blogs. What does an obscure format which started with computer geeks have to do with development? Quite a bit, say Tim Harford and Pablo Halkyard, who write the Private Sector Development Blog, the World Bank's first venture into internet blogging.

Take the words of Financial Times internet expert, David Bowen: 'In the last 12 months they have gone from being an obscure and little understood fringe activity to something we all have to think about, and quite possibly indulge in.' The development community is no exception. Here's how blogging will change both the developed and the developing world.

First, blogging improves the quality of debate. For instance, an article in the Washington Post, 'The Rise of a Market Mentality Means Many Go Hungry in Niger' in August 2005, drew furious responses from bloggers. That's nothing new, of course: people have always read newspaper articles and grumbled to their spouses over the breakfast table. The difference is that now commentators can find each other, track the debate, air their differences and discover more about the facts behind the story. Blogging technology makes it easy to collect comments and see who is citing your ideas. Readers are able to chase the debate across the internet at the click of the mouse, and contribute to it themselves - no matter if they are a CEO in New York or a student in a Nairobi internet café. Meanwhile, new research and opinion-forming analysis is quickly disseminated and discussed - and the number of new blogs is doubling every five months or so.

This changes the terms of the development debate, too. If you typed 'World Bank Blog' into Google in the summer of 2005, you'd have found that the most popular result was 'WorldBankPresident.org', a free-standing site dedicated to discussing the successor for then-President James Wolfensohn and criticising the Bank's selection methods. This apparently independent site was regularly checked by many Bank staff as well as journalists seeking a convenient way to read all the gossip. Next blog down was Friends of the Earth's 'World Bank blog', documenting their protests and the reasons behind them at the World Bank's spring meetings.

A backroom effort, followed by a campaigning site: the World Bank itself was nowhere to be found. The World Bank, and other development organisations such as the UNDP and DFID, will have to work with this new technology, as many large corporations are trying to do. But the playing field is much more level than it was even a year ago. Being a big organisation counts for very little in the booming world of blogs - what counts is quick, relevant content.

And if the playing field is being levelled within the developed world, just wait until the developing world starts to play the game. It's already happening: during this summer's Live8 campaign, some African bloggers started to complain that the concerts were irrelevant, patronising, or worse. Even just a couple of years ago, such dissenting voices from Africa would never have been heard. Huge sites, such as Harvard's Global Voices Online, are gathering together the output of 'bridge bloggers' who read local blogs and comment in English. Some countries, such as Iran, have vast blogging communities; others are tiny but growing very fast.

It has never been easier for journalists to pick up voices from the developing world - or even for you and us to do so from our desks. People all over the world are talking, but only now can we hear what they're saying.

The authors' opinions are their own and should not be attributed to the World Bank Group.

Contributor
Tim Harford and Pablo Halkyard
The World Bank
1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
USA
Tel +1 202 473 1000
Fax +1 202 477 6391
Emails phalkyard@worldbank.org and THarford@ifc.org

October 2005

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