Although those events cannot prove how big the influence of blogs is, grassroots blogs have indeed injected individualism into the social life and spiritual freedom of the Chinese people.

On the other hand, the grassroots media's growing influence on public opinion has been obvious. The Western media's distorted reports and fabricated stories about the March 14 riots in Tibet aroused the indignation of and protests by the Chinese people worldwide. On March 20, a youth in Beijing registered the website anti-CNN.com and called the site "Tibet truth: the entire record of the insult by the Western media on China." This "anti-CNN" website soon became an important place for many Chinese to expose and criticize the prejudices of some western media outlets.

After the May 12 earthquake in south China's Sichuan Province, some bloggers wrote about their own experiences and feelings and recorded some touching stories about the rescue and recovery efforts. In this manner, they were able to publish their accounts, photos and videos in the quickest way possible.

Growing popularity

The popularity of blogs and podcasts has come to the attention of the traditional medium. Television stations that previously never cited Internet news sources started to report news using sources from the Internet or Internet videos.

As an individual medium or grassroots medium, blogs are capable of the same functions of other Internet media, and they showcase the willingness of individuals to write and express themselves freely.

But it's not all good news for bloggers. While some of their accounts are accurate, they also contribute to the problem of inaccurate information on the Internet. Some bloggers have been too eager to issue unverified information to the public. Nevertheless, they are pushing the limits by challenging the news monopoly controlled by the mainstream media and other professional reporting agencies.

But the spread of false information can make blog space the scapegoat of the "information dump." So it is urgent for blogs, as the citizen media, to shoulder certain social responsibilities, while the government, traditional media and the Internet circle consider how to cultivate responsible netizens.