The Hindu : Front Page : Bloggers rise to the occasion

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 01, 2005

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Front Page

Bloggers rise to the occasion

By Ramya Kannan

CHENNAI, DEC. 31. When ABC News decided to knight the blogging community as the `Person of the Year,' they had just witnessed the overwhelming performance of the group to secure relief for victims of the tsunami. And contributing in no mean measure were the bloggers of Tamil Nadu and in particular, Chennai.

Be it information on the latest death toll, names of missing persons, aid agencies, which are accepting funds or links to various sites which provided constantly updated news about relief and rescue missions, the bloggers had it all. Information about the tsunami came up almost immediately after the seismic waves hit the shores, simultaneously as news broke over news channels.

In the report, the ABC News correspondent has credited bloggers with a readily apparent influence. "Dozens of bloggers have been filing firsthand reports from the areas devastated by South Asia's deadly tsunamis... Bloggers around the world have made themselves useful, encouraging donations to relief groups, posting the names of the missing and expressing sympathy for the victims."

Following this, bloggers scanned virtual and real resources to put out helpful information about agencies, which were accepting contributions in cash and kind for ongoing relief works.

Quickly the net was swarming with bloggers putting out compilations of such resources, directing people who would have otherwise had no access to them. Some of them created special blogs and wikipedias dedicated to hosting information about tsunamis. Others created in their existing blogs separate sections for tsunami relief and a vast majority of other bloggers too put up posts, sympathising with the victims and urging fellow bloggers to contribute generously.

Popular sites

Some of the more popular sites included http://www.tsunamivictims.org/ which continues to have an exhaustive list of agencies all over the country and even in other nations involved in relief work and http://www.tsunamihelp.blogspot.com which provides latest information not only on the victims or relief avenues, but also scientific facts about the phenomenon.

The former was set up by Mohana Krishnan, a former Chennaiite, now settled in Dubai. Feeling helpless, being away from home, he decided to contribute in the best way he could — through a web site. Not on a free site, but actually paying for the domain name and server and coordinating with other blogger friends in the country and abroad to draw up an ever-expanding list of agencies.

Chennai's Kiruba Shankar (www.kiruba.com) has been consistently blogging about tsunami and relief since December 26. Since then, his blog has become a sort of nucleus for information pile up about the tsunami. Information, comments, seismographs, charts, animations, name it and it is there on Kiruba's blog. In addition to putting the contact information of people who write to him with requests for details about where they can contribute, Kiruba also browsed other blogs to provide the latest information.

Coordinating with Ganesh at www.rupya.com, which has welcomed online donations, the team has managed to collect up to Rs.35,000. "Some of the contributors have got back to us telling us they had more confidence in giving their money to people whose blogs they have been reading for a long time. `We cannot ask the Chief Minister or Prime Minister what they have done with the money, but we can ask you what you did with it, they say," Kiruba added.

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