Fables of the Blogosphere

The End

2008-10-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

So that's it! My argument and response to Mortensen and Walker's article on blogs. I hope you have enjoyed reading what I had to say about it, and found my website and blog interesting to have a look around.

Take care all,

Kat

Money, Money, Money

2008-10-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I am close to finishing my analysis on blogs. But before I write my conclusion, I think it is necessary to further compare how blogs have changed from their creation in 1997 to the present...

Blogs have become increasingly popular for corporations in advertising and marketing products. Brands such as Sprite, Nike and Adidas have all succumbed to the power of the blog and the enormous following they have.

An example such as Tila Tequila’s recent rise to fame was due to the fact that she had over 40,000 friends on MySpace. For advertisers, this was a goldmine, as a simple banner on her blog would potentially mean that 40,000 people would see their product or service. This indicates how the idea and practical use of a blog has evolved, as companies are now looking to use people who have a large following to disseminate products and merchandise. Even though these companies are not actually creating a blog, they are using the blog medium to target potential customers. Due to the fact that MySpace has 27 million users, the majority of them being 20 years of age or younger, and rivals the number of pages viewed monthly for Google, News Corp bought the company for $850 million (Kim, 2006).

Not only are blogs used to share ideas, to write about how one is feeling or whether or not they agree with something, they are also being used to generate revenue. Some may say this is just another area where greedy corporations are trying to get their hands on as much money as they possibly can. I personally don't think it matters too much and actually think it isn't a bad idea, as long as advertisers don't go overboard.

Blogs: A Safe Sanctuary or Dangerous Den?

2008-10-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

Hi again everyone,

The following information may be a bit disturbing for some people, as I have made links to sites that may upset or offend visitors to further analyse and explore Mortensen and Walker's excerpt.

Loci amoeni refers to an idealized place of safety and comfort. Unlike loci amoeni, blogs are not shut off from the world (Mortensen and Walker, 2002) or seen as a place of safety and comfort. It is a space that is somewhat cordoned off where someone can explore without having to reveal personal details to everyone (Matrullo, 2002).

On the one hand, one could argue that it is a place of safety and comfort, as someone writes their own thoughts down and feel better for being able to write something in metaphoric privacy. On the other hand, if their idea or topic interests enough people, it can snowball. In contrast, blogs can be altered to either show who posted it, or to be completely anonymous. While bloggers can remain anonymous, their ideas and thoughts are not. It may be a safe place for someone to express themselves without fear of getting into trouble, but in terms of voicing opinions and thoughts, it is an extremely dangerous place to be in.

One example of this is how easily terrorists around the world can get in touch with each other and disseminate ideas. Obviously, a terrorist isn’t going to divulge specific ideas and details about how they are going to carry an attack out, but because you can find almost anything on the Internet, an idea can easily turned into something more dangerous. Another example is the disturbing increase in websites promoting suicide and anorexia. In the past 12 months, there has been a disturbing increase in suicides in Wales (Britten and Savill, 2008). It appears that these teenagers only kill themselves so that a memorial website where people can write things about them is created in their memory (Britten and Savill, 2008).

On pro anorexia websites, girls and women suffering from anorexia write about how much they have eaten and how much weight they are trying to lose (livejournal.com). In some posts, there was only a bit of writing at the beginning, and then a huge white space where writing should be, and then they sign off with their name. Whether it be the fact that I am not an avid blog reader and don’t own a blog, apart from this one, I was surprised to find that when I highlighted this information with my mouse, there was writing there. But this writing was hidden for a reason - the stuff I highlighted and read was quite disturbing and detailed how much they weighed, how much they had eaten for the day and so on.

Even seemingly harmless sites such as YouTube have provided good ground for people to post videos similar to those blogs mentioned in the above paragraph. For example, the shooter from the Viriginia Tech killings posted a video on YouTube, where he talked about his ideas of killing people. While the Internet provides a plethora of useful information for a variety of topics, there is also extremely dangerous and questionnable stuff, such as the videos of the Virginia Tech atrocity, that could act as a trigger for others to follow in the same footsteps and to do the same.

If this is applied to loci amoeni, it suggests that negative and in some cases, life endangering blogs can be published to a huge audience. While I am for having the Internet as a free space for anyone to post what they want, it is also an extremely dangerous place for such ideas to linger and in some cases, to be taken seriously. I know in my previous post I said that the sharing of ideas and information is beneficial to everyone, there are blogs that contain unsavoury elements that are always going to be present, no matter how hard people try to censor and shut down such blogs.

But what can be done? I think the sharing and linking of ideas is vital for the Internet and extremely beneficial for everyone to use, but sometimes, things get taken a bit too far.

Mmmm...chocolate!

2008-10-17T20:13:00.000-07:00

This next topic is where I got my idea for my sign-in name for this blog...

The phrase, ‘Scandinavian flavoured hypertext weblog cluster’, was coined by Mark Bernstein, a chief scientist at Eastgate Systems (Bernstein, 2000). As Bernstein asserts, it is “one of the best places in the world to read about new developments in new media” (Øvrebø, 2004). This notion suggests that when someone stumbles across an area that interests them on the Internet, they have the power and capacity to leave behind what Anders Fagerjord called a ‘surftrail’ of ideas (Mortensen and Walker, 2002).

Yet Bernstein criticizes bloggers for having relationships between themselves, not between ideas (Bernstein, 2000). Blogging has become more a locus for social interaction than the interlinking and evolution of ideas and thoughts. Bernstein questions whether comments reduce writers’ desire to link (Bernstein, 2000) whilst writing blogs. The bloggers once active in the ‘clustering’ of ideas no longer respond to posts the way they used to (Øvrebø, 2004).

Fagerjord argues that blogs and the idea behind them is still present, yet the intense academic and theoretical discussion has vanished (Fagerjord, 2004). This seems to contradict what blogs stand for, as people enjoy the freedom and easy access to blog content, whilst being able to critique or compliment it easily. The number of blogs in cyberspace is increasing, but their academic content may be slowly decreasing. On the other hand, the number of posts dedicated to political discussion and socially relevant topics such as global warming are multiplying at an extraordinary rate. Relevance and issues of major concern are what people nowadays want to discuss at length and to try and resolve, hence the exponential growth of blogs - because people want to have a say on these issues and to discuss them with other people with differing beliefs.

Blogs - Connecting People

2008-10-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

Hey hey hey!

So now I am moving onto the aspect of roots and tendrils, as quoted from Mortensen and Walker...

Some blogs are short and unpretentious (Mortensen and Walker, 2002), which suggests that not all blogs are academic. I know I've said this in several previous posts, but I just want to make sure people are aware that blogs are not only used for personal reasons but rather to share ideas and information. Whether it be photos, videos, a short poem or a long essay related to globalisation, the purpose is exactly the same - to share and connect people from all over the world to one idea or sliver of information.

On the other hand, bloggers and academics alike have developed the capacity to condense a large amount of information into a short blog entry. Michael Wesch’s video, Web 2.0… The Machine is Us/ing Us (Wesch, 2007) forces him to do exactly that: condense a wide span of information on web 2.0 into basic ideas and thoughts. Wesch also explores the notion that images, sound and video on the Internet are used to connect people, both informationally and socially: “Digital text is no longer just linking information…Hypertext is no longer just linking information…The Web is no longer just linking information…Web is linking information…Web is linking people…Web 2.0 is linking people…people sharing, trading, and collaborating” (Kelly, 2005). Without being able to link and share ideas about things, the blogging community would fail.

This relates directly to my previous argument about Jenkins and his lambasting and labelling bloggers as 'cockroaches'. Without people accessing the Internet to discuss and sometimes debate topics that interest them, then Merholz's notion of 'we blog' would fail miserably. How can people be expected to be proactive and to use the Internet for the sharing of ideas when academics such as Jenkins are criticising them for something I believe is a necessity? I honestly can't imagine what the Internet would be like without having people who are dedicated to commenting on other people's work available for everyone to obtain.

If a reference is made to Mark Pesce's video 'Those Wacky Kids', he said that he could surf the Internet in the old days in a matter of hours because there was such a limited amount of information on it. If a comparison is made to today, there are an infinite number of websites and blogs on the Internet suggesting that Jenkins really has no leg to stand on and that he has no idea what he is talking about. A point must also be made to the dissemination and span of ideas that this accessibility to the Internet means. I can look at a blog on web 2.0 originating from India and then click to view another blog on web 2.0 originating from Canada. It is so simple and easy to get a hold of this information that would've taken so much more time and effort if we were to try and do so when Pesce first used the Internet.

I am certainly thankful for the immense amount of stuff we can access today. Not only has it given lots of people a chance to learn more, but, more importantly, it also allows people to experience things they may never have experienced before, thanks to the interconnectivity that blogs provide.

Plus, it's pretty cool to be talking to people from all over the world and to meet them on your blog for some discussion about sports, politics or movies!

Academics and cockroaches

2008-10-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

Ugh. What a day. If I could, I would go to bed right now and sleep for hours and hours. I am so tired. I know it's the last week of uni and all, but I have never felt this lethargic in a while. Maybe it's the change of weather. Or maybe I just really need to have a good, long holiday back home without worrying about assignments and deadlines.

Anyway, enough bitching from me for now. I must get down to the nitty-gritty issue of Mortensen and Walker's excerpt...

Academics are jumping on board and using blogs to communicate to a wider audience. Henry Jenkins treated bloggers as a research topic, referring to them as ‘cockroaches’ and forms of ‘extreme sports'. What was surprising was how bloggers reacted to these labels, with a huge divide between how bloggers perceived themselves and how they were viewed by others, especially academics. Bloggers were outraged and somewhat ironically used the platform of his blog, to respond to his work. Jenkins has only recently re-established his blog after his cockroach comment (Walker, 2006).

"Like cockroaches after nuclear war, online diarists rule an Internet strewn with failed dot coms. (…) Bloggers are turning the hunting and gathering,sampling and critiquing the rest of us do online into an extreme sport. We surf the Web; these guys snowboard it. Bloggers are the minutemen of the digital revolution." - Jenkins

Naturally, anyone is allowed to say almost anything they want to on the Internet without getting into trouble. But the fact that these bloggers took it so seriously shows how much they take their 'job', if you want to call it that. I do agree with them, however. Jenkins overexaggerates the content of blogs, as he relates it to an 'extreme sport'. Yet without bloggers doing what they do online, everything Mortensen and Walker wrote and theorised about would fall through. There would be no online communities of thought, no roots or connections established. Essentially, all of the information on the Internet wouldn't be as densely interlinked as it currently is.

The point I am trying to make is that without having links to other blogs, either in support or against the content of the blog, information wouldn't be shared as intimately as it is, and ideas wouldn't be a collection of beliefs, thoughts and feelings belonging to a vast amount of people.

Another side of the argument could stem from the fact that a form of two-way communication was established, as people unfamiliar with Jenkins’ and his work could experience some of his classroom conversations and he could interact with people he wouldn't normally talk to (Walker, 2006). Millions of websites are dedicated to helping people learn about Maths, English and Physics, with thousands of university websites where people can access lectures, yet real learning and research happens more in the intersections between experiences and ideas found in conversations on blogs and social groups (Walker, 2006).

Extension of man, man!

2008-10-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

Now if I can pick up where I left off a few posts ago...

Ah yes, that's it. I was talking about how blogs differ from person to person, and the fact that they can be designed in a variety of ways, which ultimately reflects the blog creator's personality and taste. I found some useful information about the theory behind this seemingly simple idea.

Many bloggers consider their posts to be an extension or representation of themselves (Boyd, 2006). Marshall McLuhan’s phrase, “the medium is an extension of man” (Federman, 2004) applies here, as the Internet allows people to create an extension of themselves via a relatively new medium. With ready access and availability around the world, the task of making an ‘extension of themselves’ is also relatively easy. It has even been argued that “the community resides in the mind of the individual blogger as an online imagined community resulting from the shared experience of instant publishing” (Trevino, 2005).

Each blogger has the capacity to develop a distinct style; one that emerges from the creativity of the producer and reflects their personal character (Edmonds, 2005). Williams and Jacobs assert that rather than “alienate a readership by exposing one's personal traits and idiosyncrasies, it adds to the very popularity of blogs, as ‘exhibitionistic behavior is encouraged, supported, and even sought’ by the ‘cyber-voyageurs’ of this theater” (William and Jacobs, 2004). Further, blogs facilitate feedback from peers, supporting knowledge building; and help form new contextualizations in learning through the immediate sharing of other materials through hyperlinks (Williams and Jacobs, 2004).

This notion can be directly linked to Mortensen and Walker's excerpt on how blogs are like roots and fragments reaching out for each other. Once one idea has been published on the Internet, someone somewhere will read it, and either comment on it, or begin a discussion from it. Even a small comment has the potential to snowball into a related topic to the body of what was being commented on, or to build on what was already said. I found McLuhan's idea of blogs as an "extension of man" to be an excellent analogy for the behaviour associated with blogs, as blogs are, to a certain extent, digital representations of oneself. The topics someone writes about, the ideas, the tone and even the design of a blog is all that people have access to when surfing the web. Through this, opinions and thoughts are disseminated in the enormous span that is the Internet, which leads to communities of thought and ideas.

Ah, that was a big paragraph. I also like to think of blogs as a disguise of some sort; although blogs are personalised, they aren't always representative of the person writing it. Anyone can pretend to be someone else on the Internet, which poses a huge range of problems. I'll cover this in a later post...

For now, I am going to give my wrists and fingers a rest from all this typing!

Media vs Blogger Representation

2008-10-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

After looking at the previous post I wrote, I thought it would be good to have some information about how both media and blog representations differ.

Blogs allow people the freedom to express themselves and their opinions about what they believe is right or wrong, and what should be done about to improve any given situation. Weblog editors participate in the dissemination and interpretation of the news we see and hear everyday (Blood, 2000). As bloggers have authorial control over their own work, they do not have to conform to commercial and editorial guidelines that journalists and media organizations must follow. Thus, bloggers have the huge advantage of writing whatever they want on whatever topic they wish, while the media have to be careful about issues such as defamation.

Bloggers have a lot more freedom to publish opinions online. They don’t hold back, either, being unafraid to voice their opinions on politics or even contentious topics such as abortion. The media has to filter the information they disseminate. While a blog represents the thoughts and ideas of an individual, it is also written with the intention of publication. Increasingly, individual opinions on blogs can be valued more highly than those in the mainstream media, as:

“Instead of coming to a consensus opinion, as much of the traditional media did, weblogs showed the dissent among individuals. Bloggers were very vocal about their opinions and reactions to September 11th and the aftermath.”

What do you guys think? Do you agree that the opinions posted on blogs can be taken more seriously than those conveyed by the media, or do you think beliefs on blogs have to be taken with a pinch of salt?

Blogs and Media Influence

2008-10-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

One topic I found really interesting was the links between the media and blogs, and how influential blogs have been for different mediums of media. Not only did this interest me because I am studying professional communications, but because until I researched this area of blogs and their relevance to the media, I was unaware of just how popular blogs still are and how many people continue to use them for a variety of different purposes.

Weblogs have become increasingly influential for the media, especially since the second war in Iraq (Thomson, 2003). One of the best examples is the events of September 11, 2001, which revealed how personal opinion and experience needed a medium of communication that was independent from the public authorities (Mortensen and Walker, 2002) and gave the public a chance to speak out. If the media’s stance is taken into account, it can be seen that their perspective was relatively objective.

On the other hand, if one were to consider a blogger’s perspective, it would be completely different, and contain subjectively prejudiced information thoughts on the attacks. For example, Biased BBC's blog details how the author of the blog believes that America was to blame for the attacks, and not terrorists. The difference here is that the media has guidelines to adhere to. They can't condemn or speculate on who carried out the attacks until they have hard evidence, whereas a blogger can quickly log onto the Internet to express distress or anger towards what has happened without the constriction of guidelines and rules.

Interestingly, September 11 saw the use of blogs for numerous different things. For instance, Anthony Hect wrote about what he first saw and heard as the events of the day unfolded. David Winer acted in a similar manner, and decided to have a live feed running from his blog for people to listen to news flashes, New York webcam stills and links to witness accounts (Andrews, 2006). Blogs were also used for the more traditional means of remembering those who lost their lives on that day. Many of these blogs are also connected with each other. There were several blogs dedicated to families who had lost people, but were interlinked with each other to share their memories and to offer support for one another.

The fact that blogs can be manipulated and tailored to suit all types of purposes can be linked to how they act as roots and tendrills - although so many blogs were written or created because of this one tragedy, so many people are connected through it, whether it be through listening to reports on the Internet, or whether it is to remember someone who perished. Whatever the reason, it is something everyone can relate to and comment on or discuss it. In this sense, a community of bloggers is created through events that happen.

Habermas' Public Sphere

2008-10-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

Hallo,

Now we get into the good stuff - the meat of my response to Mortensen and Walker's article.

Since public awareness of the Internet began in the 1990s, those interested in communications and media have been intrigued to learn more about Habermas’ public sphere (Thomson, 2003). Blogs represent an extremely convenient and accessible medium which allows the expression of opinions and thoughts with a few clicks of a mouse. Blogs are a space for people to express themselves, whether the focus is on their personal life or attacking their government’s newest policies and regulations.

The public is invited to share the ‘private’ diary of an individual, but what is apparent is that weblog entries are attempts to express the writer’s concerns (Mortensen and Walker, 2002). Additionally, Weinberger asserts that the Internet is a permanent public space that gathers value every time someone creates a new website or comments on a blog post (Weinberger, 2002). He adds that the Internet is a second world to us, moving more of our social lives online (Weinberger, 2002). With technology advancing at such an incredible pace, social interaction over the Internet is becoming increasingly common and is replacing physical interaction with digital interaction.

Contrary to Habermas’ thesis on the public sphere, blogging differs from community tools as their expressions are captured locally and not in a commonly shared place (Boyd, 2006). Habermas’ theory does not provide “public opinion”, but rather, “mere opinion” (Thomson, 2003). If blogs were to convey a sense of public opinion, then they would relate consensus viewpoints. Blogs represent “mere opinion”, usually being either one or a couple of people’s opinions and not broadly representative. This is evidenced by the sheer range of different blog genres, as well as the number of people who post replies to blogs with differing views and arguments.

Necessary structure?

2008-10-12T19:51:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

One thing that always struck me as strange is why blogs are published in chronological order. Sure, it makes things easier to read and it gives the blog a sense of structure, but in some cases, it is too structured. The point I am trying to make is that, as I explained in a previous post, while some people do use blogs as something similar to a digital diary, others want to have the freedom of using it as a digital scrapbook.

The structure of a blog is unconventional, as it is set in chronological order and goes against the logical flow of an argument or the patterns of rhetoric (Mortensen and Walker, 2002). Similarly, Roland Barthes, who tried to escape conventional writing styles, explained that:

“The alphabetical order erases everything, banishes every origin. Perhaps in places, certain fragments seem to follow one another by some affinity, but the important thing is that these little networks not be connected, that they not slide into a single enormous network which would be the structure of the book, its meaning. It is in order to halt, to deflect, to divide this descent of discourse toward a destiny of the subject, that at certain moments the alphabet calls you to order (to disorder) and says: Cut! Resume the story in another way” (Barthes, 1989).

To a certain extent, I agree with Barthes' above quote as I think the idea of following a chronological order of writing suggests that ideas are not done on the spurr of the moment and are actually planned out and thought of before execution. Especially in cases of making a blog as personable as possible, using date and time stamps on every post to show when it was written and at what time, defeats the level of intimacy a blog should contain. Blogs that aren't dedicated to personal information, for example, a blog about furniture, needn't have such structure to it.

On the other hand, I am trying to imagine what a blog would look like if there were posts from all over the place on the screen. It would provide some difficulty for people to read information on the site if they were not avid followers of the blog. It would also prove to be extremely confusing. The idea of having chronological posts also provides a stream of consciousness that the reader can detect when reading several posts.

I guess this structure only applies to blogs that have a sense of personality to it. I don't think a blog about gardening necessarily needs order to it, apart from when people reply to a previous post or discuss an issue that has been brought up in the past.

Blog Aesthetics

2008-10-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

To start with the basics of all things basic, I decided to dedicate this blog post to how blogs differ in design and layout.

Blogs range in size, content and genre, as the threshold for publishing a single post is very low and there are times when there are meaningless and small ideas that are expressed (Mortensen and Walker, 2002). Occasionally, some ideas ferment and gradually branch out into different arguments and thought processes. For example, there may be a specific topic that numerous people find interesting and write about, but there will be a handful of experts who will publish numerous responses to the original post (Blood, 2000).

Rebecca Blood uses the term “cult personalities” to describe how certain bloggers position themselves and perceive their online roles (Blood, 2000). While select bloggers enjoy writing for large audiences, the majority prefer to entertain a small audience who enjoy the same music, art and movies, (Boyd, 2006). Blogs contain pieces of knowledge on almost any topic and thus function like metadata (Leidlmair, 2007).

The fact that there are options on all blogging websites for people to alter the way their blog looks, and in some cases, to completely revamp the original look of the blog and change it to something they have coded themselves, suggests how personable someone wants to make their own space on the Internet. Even if someone is creating a non-personal blog, but instead creating a blog that relates to a specific topic, like the 2008 US Elections, they can also do so.

The creation of blogs

2008-10-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

Hello again!

I was sitting in my room the other day thinking about how fast the semester has gone by and realised that before I started Networked Media, I had no idea exactly what the word 'blog' meant. Since my final project for the subject is one blogs, I think it is about time to set the record straight and to flesh out what blogs are and who came up with the term.

The term blog must be defined in order to fully understand the question as well as the blogging environment. John Barger coined the phrase ‘weblog’ in 1997, with Peter Merholz in 1999 separating weblog into ‘we blog’ (Boyd, 2006). Both terms were created in order to provide people with a certain look and feel separate from those they encountered on web pages (Boyd, 2006). Furthermore, to blog is to participate in “a community of smart, tech-savvy people who want to be on the forefront of new literary undertaking” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2008).

Essentially, the blog was created not only to distinguish a difference between webpages, but also for people to become part of a community of tech-savvy people, where thoughts, ideas and opinions could be expressed in no time whatsoever. This builds further on Merholz's assertion of 'we blog', as it indicates the belief that everyone should be able to create a blog and to write anything the person wants to.

But that was over 10 years ago and society and beliefs have most certainly altered. Blog behaviour and etiquette (if you can call it that) has definitely changed too, and not always for the better. In today's society, where the Internet in most countries is a place where people have a free run of what they write, subscribe to and publish, the sharing of ideas and beliefs is endless.

It's a girl!

2008-10-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

So here is my new baby, my new blog, a place for me to write whatever I want and whenever I want. I have had a few blogs before, but I was never really dedicated to writing substantial and interesting stuff in it. Hopefully this one will be a bit different.

After thinking a lot about how I was going to begin my final project assignment for Networked Media, I decided that the best platform for me to write on would be a blog, as the question I am answering is all about blogs and how they have changed over the past 10 years. The other two questions I could've answered didn't interest me at all. I thought I could do a lot more with this question, not only in terms of design, layout and coding, but also in terms of research and content.

The information I have uncovered so far looks promising and is all pretty interesting. Obviously there was the mundane task of looking at the history of blogs, but there was other information that I had no idea related to blogs, or involved blogs in some manner. I just hope I can portray this content in a meaningful as well as in a creative and entertaining manner through the use of this blog, through links and through other pages I am going to create.

So welcome, to all who are interested in finding out about blogs and learning a bit more about social networking! I hope you find this blog as interesting as I have found the research process. I hope you enjoy the discussion, arguments and examples I have to offer.

Speak to you all soon!