“Terminal afflication” is not a concept I’m familiar with so I’ll do some investigation.

Incidentally, I think that people who don’t use their real name when they’re *trying* to be serious bloggers (and by the way, bloggers aren’t journalists but journalists can be bloggers) have little or no credibility anyway. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that if you have a view own it.

Thanks. Very interesting points there Justin.

â??Some people feel able to express themselves when otherwise they canâ??t, or perceive they canâ??t, because of some internal or external factor such as lack of confidence or membership of a proscriptive organisation.â??

I can certainly relate to the above statement. Participation in online discussion and blogging can be less inhibitive than other forms of communication, but it cannot be forgotten that like any form of communication, there will be many more factors than the amount of inhibition to act that will determine oneâ??s cost-benefit analysis of blogging.

My current blogging challenge is to write up a defense of former Prime Minister Paul Keating’s recent speech at the Sydney Film School. This highlights an example of the difficulties of political blogging.

The controversial public address by former Prime Minister Paul Keating to the Sydney Film School was followed by what might be described as â??a unilateral responseâ?? by the Mainstream Media: the â??think before you speak, Mr. Keatingâ?? response of our newspaper editors.

What sparked controversy was Mr. Keatingâ??s mention of Adolf Hitler in the same speech he is being critical of current day Prime Minister John Howard, the same man that beat Paul Keating in the 1996 federal election.

With an overwhelming condemnation of Keatingâ??s use of language by the editors of The Age, Herald Sun and The Australian, why would anyone in public, whether in the Mainstream Media or Online, defend Keatingâ??s right to express himself as controversially as he did?

The internet provides me with an opportunity to challenge the Mainstream Media response and I am indeed preparing an article now.

I can research this effort without the inhibition of being part of an inner circle of journalists, but when youâ??re interpreting a speech such as Mr. Keatingâ??s speech, the Internet also carries the risk of being an express route to â??terminal afflictionâ??, a term used in one of three articles on culture and technology of computer use in yesterdayâ??s edition of The Weekend Australian.

Especially as my online activity isnâ??t anonymous (and never has been), my reputation is therefore put at risk.

Add problems for bloggers to do with content development, resources and audience reach. Not that these problems cannot be addressed, but they are all factors in conducting a cost-benefit analysis when deciding whether to enter a public debate.

Consideration of all the factors can almost be enough to make one want to consider whether itâ??s better to be kept in the dark about a subject than to find your way through the dark using only a bloggerâ??s capacity to inquire.

Yet even with all the project constraints of blogging considered, thereâ??s still â??inquiry and perspectiveâ?? for the blogger to discover, even if these actions donâ??t fit the mould of journalism discourse such as â??breaking a storyâ??.

As a â??non-journalistâ?? engaged in inquiry and developing a perspective of my own, Iâ??m inspired by an article I read in yesterdayâ??s Herald Sun about TV presenter Kerri-Anne Kennerly.

Describing her approach to inquiry, Kennerly says:

â??I would never consider myself a journalist, but I think communicator is a reasonable description.â??

I just think there are ways that arenâ??t rude or impertinent of asking virtually anythingâ??.

Indeed, as many of us bloggers are discovering, there are other ways of dealing with inquiry than being a journalist. It should therefore not be assumed that only one way of inquiry â?? journalism â?? will always succeed at capturing and interpreting all the pertinent details of a story.

This is why I am currently researching and writing a review of the Mainstream Media coverage of Paul Keatingâ??s recent speech, which will conclude with an alternative interpretation of that speech.

â?¦From Justin.

I have no idea why people abused her so. Strange.

I think being anon plays a big part. If you were having a conversation with someone in the real world and they said, “My name is Death Beast and you are a leftist nutter” you’d just back away slowly and/or call 000.

However, it’s good that the interweb can be a positive force for teaching each other about ourselves (sometimes it’s too easy to focus on the silliness).

Yes, Phil, it is the good with the bad. I think we can mostly ignore the bad.

It could also be the case that interweb readers feel less inhibited about finding out about lives that seem very different to their own.

And of course the web makes it so much easier. As with all things…..the good and the bad.