Jeff Ooi, arguably Malaysia's most influential blogger, has been invited by the Harvard Law School to speak at an international conference on the Internet, which will be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next month.

The conference, organised by Harvard Law School's research arm Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, will discuss key issue-based Internet campaigns, emerging business models and new technologies that are affecting politics throughout the world.

Titled 'Votes, Bits and Bytes', the conference will also look at the blogging phenomenon and how it has affected the political and media landscape.

One of the highlights of the conference is to look at South Korea's OhMyNews.com portal as a case study of Internet's influence over politics.

Joining Ooi in his panel discussion on this case study will be Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN bureau chief for Beijing and Tokyo; Stephen Ward of the University of Salford and Oxford Internet Institute; and OhMyNews founder Oh Yeon-ho.

OhMyNews , a collaborative online newspaper with a readership of two million and more than 26,000 registered "citizen journalists", has been credited with playing a key role in sweeping President Roh Moo-hyun to power.

Ooi will also partner Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, a.k.a. Hoder, in leading international bloggers at a session on promoting the global 'blogosphere'. This session will form the input for Global Voice Online, a cyber-movement which the conference is aiming to establish.

"We will be looking at how to leverage blogs as a new medium for expression and to mutually benefit each member of the 'cyber-community' in a globe-spanning context, no matter they are from Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Kenya or anywhere else," Ooi told malaysiakini .

"We will almost certainly discuss pitfalls such as governments and the military in certain nations which feel disconnected from the blogging phenomenon and misunderstand its role.

"We will also look at challenges like technical hurdles, government censorship, and language problems experienced by bloggers from different environments, and our input will then be channelled to Harvard Law School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for their research programmes," he added.

Fifth estate

For Ooi, OhMyNews ' increasing relevance in the South Korean socio-political landscape, and the Berkman Centre conference itself, are compelling indicators that online media and weblogs have emerged as the 'fifth estate' after the conventional press.

Ooi began his ' Screenshots ' weblog in January last year, first focusing on ICT (information and communications technology) industry issues as well as governance in the public sector, but later expanded it into a 'media watch' blog of sorts because he felt that Malaysia's mainstream media was not examining issues in a critical enough manner.

An e-business consultant, Ooi has been penning his blog on a part-time basis.

"The organisers recognised me as 'a strong advocate for knowledge society driven by the Internet', which I quite agree," said Ooi, whose ' Screenshots ' appears in online news daily malaysiakini's frontpage.

"From the Malaysian context, I would emphasis that the MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) vision has lodged us on the steep curve to leap-frog into the First World era," Ooi said. "This is supported strongly with well-defined legal framework and timetable, and a relatively democratic environment."

However, he said there had been some impediments to realising the vision.

Hence, for all his belief in the impact blogs are making, Ooi readily concedes that Malaysia still has a long way to go before the so-called 'fifth estate' can play a dominant role.

Blogs may be affecting changes in the United States and South Korea because both countries have high Internet penetration rates, Ooi said.

"I do not think Malaysia will ever reach the kind of critical mass the United States has in terms of influencing public perception at least, not in the next five years," said Ooi.

Malaysia's PC ownership is only 16.7 percent of a population of 25 million, much lower than the 40 percent penetration rate in developed countries. The Internet penetration rate is at 11.4 percent, and the broadband penetration rate is less than 1 percent.

"You may say that the online community in Malaysia is meagre, feeble and minuscule," Ooi said. "Bloggers can only target the niche audience of Internet-dependent people."

"I call them knowledge workers, hoping that their sphere of influence can expand and ultimately lead to a participative community in cyberspace," he added.

It is a goal that Ooi has been working towards for several years.

Under fire

Way before he began his ' Screenshots ' blog, Ooi had already formed a grassroots movement by founding the USJ.com community portal in 1999.

A year later, the portal - operated on Open Source software and without any financial grants - went on to win a series of awards, including the prestigious Pikom Internet Award for Best Community Website, and the @My Malaysia Internet Award 2000 for Best Community Development Website.

Despite having an outreach to a niche audience, Ooi has garnered attention from the powers-that-be.

Last month, a few government-controlled newspapers ran a series of articles attacking Ooi for "publishing" seditious views.

His ' Screenshots ' came under fire over an allegedly blasphemous comment posted by a person calling himself 'Anwar', which ridiculed the concept of Islam Hadhari.

This was despite that Ooi had responded to the offending posting by rebuking the writer and banning him from further contributing to his weblog's forum even before the newspapers published their reports.

Deputy Internal Security Minister Noh Omar had later warned that the Internal Security Act (ISA) could be invoked against the blogger.

However, no action has been taken against Ooi.