Have Your Say: a hands-on workshop on blogging as a political communication tool

On Sunday 19th November 2006, the two famous Malaysian bloggers, Jeff Ooi and Jeremiah Foo, arrived at the Malaysiakini in Bangsar by the invitation of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation to provide training / workshop to a group of blogger want-to-be.

The objectives of the workshop are for participants:

1. to understand the best practices of blogging especially in the Malaysian political context.
2. to appreciate the potential power of blogs as communications tools.
3. to understand the importance of a clear message that defines their online publishing.
4. to be familiar with the basic editorial and writing guidelines regarding online communications and apply them.
5. to be able to produce and maintain their own blogs.

It was a good combination of trainers since Jeff Ooi, who discussed about blogging as a political communication tool, is a practitioner, and Jeremiah Foo can provide excellent technical support in setting up blogs. While the former can explain the reason to have a blog and to make use of it politically, the latter can show how to set it up and work around it to make it as an effective tool.

In the presentations of Jeff Ooi, he explained the reason and the trend of blogging in the globalised world. Blogging is a powerful political communication tool in the 21st century. In the Malaysian political context, positive use of internet and tools should be promoted. Blogs should be positioned as opinion-shapers and outreach to change agents including netizens and fellow bloggers, NGOs, participants in grassroots journalism and community of Practice.

How have we achieved from the workshop? All participants managed to set up their own blogs using wordpress programme. They learnt how important it is to have a clear message when write their entries. It is necessary to write short title and brief message. Long text tends to be ignored by readers. Adding nice photos can help increase volume of visitors.

“It is very useful and I am glad I joined the workshop today. Now I can blog and have my say in the topic concern me” said one of the participants. There is also a request for FNF to organize a second level of blogging workshop that is to provide training on how to write on certain topics. Next blogging workshop will be announced in this website.

[ Back ]