Stii was kind enough to provide me with a dump of all blog posts that were tagged with ‘Xenophobia’. Though there is currently no way to link twitter usernames to the blog posts. Therefore i have uploaded the spreadsheet to Google docs, anyone can edit it as long as you have an account. Please add your twitter username to all your own blog posts or any others that you may recognize. the rest of the fields are optional. If you cannot edit the spreadsheet send me your blog url and i will capture it:

Email: (idhorat)-(@)-(gmail)dot(com)
Twitter: ismaild
———————
Invite to collaborate on the document:

I’ve shared a document with you called “xenophobia_blogs_google”:

Capture Directly onto the sheet (Use this to see if your blog post is included on the list):
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pTD3FWar02UT7peKMx1YXSg

Capture in the Form (Use this, it’s the easiest option)

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pTD3FWar02USt49zxHtknJQ&email=true

It’s not an attachment — it’s stored online at Google Docs. To open this document, just click the link above.

Doing an analysis on effects of social media / twitter / blogs in a
crisis situation, I need to link up the blog posts to twitter
usernames. If you have blogged about the Xenophobia please claim it and
add your name under the column ‘Twitter username’
————

I would also appreciate if you could pass this on to any bloggers you know that have blogged about the situation.

Take a look at the screen shot of the most popular blogs in the last 30 days which are publicly available here.

The top two sites(Rugbydump & Keo) which account for roughly 30% of the traffic focus mostly on rugby. There is nothing entirely wrong with that as sites like amatomu are ‘democratic’ and the public choose the best with the number of visits but the statistics become more interesting when you delve deeper to what they actually mean.

I do not believe anyone could claim that rugby is the most watched or the most popular sport amongst South Africans yet these blogs are the most popular, this further proves that the blogosphere is not actually an accurate representation of South Africans.

This points out that black bloggers and readers are strangely lacking. This was covered by Khanya when the site launched. A year later and the picture has not changed. Khanya ends his blog with

“Perhaps there is a need for some affirmative action here.”

This is just plain silly.

It however does point out that Black South Africans are not blogging nearly enough nor are they surfing as much. I haven’t seen any statistics on internet usage or access to PC’s of black South Africans but i am willing to bet that the imbalance would be represented there as well.

Instead of calling for affirmative action, we should concentrate on education and getting people access to computers & the internet.

As with my previous post i will end with:
Stay tuned for some practical steps to initiate change.