Blogging E-Book

Jill Walker Rettberg

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: DMS - Digital Media and Society
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 292

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Blogging has profoundly influenced not only the nature of the internet today, but also the nature of modern communication, despite being a genre invented less than a decade ago. This book-length study of a now everyday phenomenon provides a close look at blogging while placing it in a historical, theoretical and contemporary context.

Scholars, students and bloggers will find a lively survey of blogging that contextualises blogs in terms of critical theory and the history of digital media. Authored by a scholar-blogger, the book is packed with examples that show how blogging and related genres are changing media and communication. It gives definitions and explains how blogs work, shows how blogs relate to the historical development of publishing and communication and looks at the ways blogs structure social networks and at how social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook incorporate blogging in their design. Specific kinds of blogs discussed include political blogs, citizen journalism, confessional blogs and commercial blogs.

Leseprobe

Blogging

Digital Media and Society Series

Mark Deuze, Media WorkAlexander Halavais, Search Engine SocietyRobert Hassan, The Information SocietyTim Jordan, HackingJill Walker Rettberg, Blogging

Blogging

Jill Walker Rettberg

polity

Copyright © Jill Walker Rettberg 2008

The right of Jill Walker Rettberg to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2008 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge cb2 1ur, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, ma 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

isbn-13: 978-0-7456-4133-1

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset in 10.25 on 13 pt FF Scalaby Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, CheshirePrinted and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

Text design by Peter Ducker

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every e¤ort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1  What is a Blog?

How to Blog

Three Blogs

Defining Blogs

A Brief History of Weblogs

2  From Bards to Blogs

Orality and Literacy

The Introduction of Print

Print, Blogging and Reading

Printed Precedents of Blogs

The Late Age of Print

A Modern Public Sphere?

Hypertext and Computer Lib

Technological Determinism or Cultural Shaping of Technology?

3  Blogs, Communities and Networks

Social Network Theory

Distributed Conversations

Technology for Distributed Communities

Other Social Networks

Publicly Articulated Relationships

Colliding Networks

Emerging Social Networks

4  Citizen Journalists?

Bloggers’ Perception of Themselves

When it Matters Whether a Blogger is a Journalist

Objectivity, Authority and Credibility

First-hand Reports: Blogging from a War Zone

First-hand Reports: Chance Witnesses

Bloggers as Independent Journalists and Opinionists

Gatewatching

Symbiosis

5  Blogs as Narratives

Fragmented Narratives

Goal-oriented Narrative

Ongoing Narration

Blogs as Self-exploration

Fictions or Hoaxes? Kaycee Nicole and lonelygirl15

6  Blogging Brands

The Human Voice

Advertisements on Blogs

Micropatronage

Sponsored Posts and Pay-to-Post

Corporate Blogs

Engaging Bloggers

Corporate Blogging Gone Wrong

7  The Future of Blogging

Implicit Participation

Perils of Personalized Media

References

Blogs Mentioned

Index

Acknowledgements

Without the constant conversations with the readers of my blog and with other bloggers, and the inspiration of reading blogs throughout the blogosphere, this book wouldn’t have existed. Thanks also to Blogger.com, for making me aware that anyone, even I, could easily make a blog – that opened new worlds to me.

While writing this book I’ve had the support of my colleagues at the University of Bergen, particularly the humanistic informatics group, and I would like to thank everyone there for years of conversations and ideas. I also spent a month at the University of Western Australia, finishing the manuscript while a guest researcher at the Department of Communication Studies. Tama Leaver (of tamaleaver.net) was especially helpful during my stay in Perth, reading most of the chapters and making many valuable suggestions for additions and reorg anisations. In addition, I received useful comments from Ingeborg Kleppe at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration.

My editor at Polity Press, Andrea Drugan, has been an inspiration and support throughout the process of writing this book, from working out the synopsis to finishing the manuscript. Her feedback has always been rapid and helpful. I’ve also appreciated the feedback I’ve received from the reviewers, which has helped me to make many improvements to the manuscript.

Many thanks are due to Heather B. Armstrong, Jason Kottke, and Markos Moulitsas for permission to reprint screenshots from their blogs. Thank you also to Google for permission to reprint screenshots from the Blogger.com blogging interface, and to the Rand Corporation for permission to reprint the diagram from Paul Baran’s paper.

And of course, my deeply loving thanks to my family, especially to my daughter Aurora, for giving me such good reasons to step away from the computer, and to my wonderful husband and colleague Scott Rettberg, for suggesting great examples and discussing ideas along the way, for reading the manuscript several times and giving me very useful feedback, for suggesting the megaphone on the cover, and for being a splendid partner in every way.

Introduction

Ten years ago, the word ‘blog’ didn’t exist. Today, mainstream media routinely use the word without bothering to explain it. Weblogs have become part of popular consciousness with a speed that is remarkable by any standard. What is this new form of communication that has so suddenly entered our culture?

I began blogging in October 2000, when I was working on my PhD thesis, and I’ve been blogging since. Like most bloggers, I learnt about blogging by doing it. Blogging is as much about reading other blogs as about writing your own, and the best way to understand blogging is to immerse yourself in it. However, blogs are also a part of a larger context. They are part of the history of communication and literacy, and emblematic of a shift from uni-directional mass media to participatory media, where viewers and readers become creators of media. Blogs are also part of the history of literature and writing. Apath can be traced from early autobiographical writing through diary writing and memoirs up to the confessional and personal diary-style blogs of today (Serfaty 2004). Blogs are part of the current changes in journalism and in marketing. They are part of the growth of social networks like MySpace and Facebook, which in their turn have roots in the social network theory put forward by sociologists in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as in the network structure of the Internet, which was designed around the same period.

Blogs are founded upon the link, building connections bet ween related issues. Blogs are themselves related to many different contexts and can be interpreted from many different disciplines: media studies, the history of technology, sociology, ethnology, literary studies, marketing, journalism and more. Furthermore, blogs can function as a lens with which to see how all these fields have developed up until today, and with which we can understand more about other, related, social media.

The first chapter of this book is an introduction to blogs, explaining how blogs work. We look at three blogs in detail, each of which represents a different kind of blog. We’ll then discuss the defining characteristics of blogs, and finally look at the history of blogging.

The next two chapters look at blogging from two broader yet different perspectives. Chapter 2 sees blogging in a historical context, and explores ways in which major cultural shifts, such as the introduction of print, the spread of literacy, and our expanding access to the Internet connect to blogging. It also examines ways in which cultural theories of communication and writing relate to the practice of blogging. In chapter 3, we look at current research on blogs as social arenas, in particular discussing social network theory and considering how social networks like MySpace and Facebook relate to blogs.

The fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of the book deal with different kinds of blogs. Chapter 4 looks at the symbiosis between blogging and journalism. Chapter 5 considers blogs as narratives, and explores the characteristics of blog narratives both in terms of narrative structure and in terms of the uneasy relationships between fiction, self-representation and authenticity. Chapter 6 examines commercial blogging, looking at the ways in which blogs are being used in marketing and by businesses as well as at the way individuals are setting up blogs as small businesses and earning a living from advertising revenue.

Finally, chapter 7 offers speculations on the future of blogging. Blogging has very rapidly become a popular form of writing – will we still blog in twenty years’ time, or will other ways of communicating have taken over by then? Will blogging continue to increase the general public’s ability to speak back and to be heard? Will it be subsumed by mass media, or change into something else altogether? What are the perils and promises of blogging?

This book contains references to many blogs, as well as to conventional sources. Blogs that are discussed are not generally included in the main bibliography, but are listed separately at the end of the book, along with their URLs at the time of writing or, in the case of blogs that are no longer actively maintained, their URL at the time they were active. However, blogs are by nature an ephemeral form, and some will have changed URLs or shut down completely by the time you read this. If so, I would recommend trying to enter the URL into The Inter net Archive’s Wayback Machine at http://archive.org. This will usually provide you with search results allowing you to view the blog as it appeared at regular intervals during the period when it was active.

This book aims to be like a blog in that it constantly links to – or refers to – actual examples of what blogs are doing and what bloggers are writing, as well as to more conventional sources such as scholarship on blogs and their context. Being a book, it can also draw upon the strengths of this slower, longer format by providing a context and a sustained discussion that would be diffcult in the faster, more fragmentary medium of blogs. But although reading about blogs is valuable for those who wish to gain an overview and to think about the meaning of blogs in today’s culture, anyone who really wants to understand blogs will need to start their own blog and to read other blogs. It’s easy. If you haven’t already tried blogging, give it a go!

CHAPTER ONE

What is a Blog?

To really understand blogs, you need to read them over time. Following a blog is like getting to know someone, or like watching a television series. Because blogging is a cumulative process, most posts presuppose some knowledge of the history of the blog, and they fit into a larger story. There’s a very different sense of rhythm and continuity when you follow a blog, or a group of blogs, over time, compared to simply reading a single post that you’ve found through a search engine or by following a link from another Web site.

In most forms of print publishing, such as newspaper articles, novels or poetry, the author is not in charge of the way the text will look. The text is written in a word processor (or on a typewriter, or by hand) and submitted to an editor who, usually with a sta¤ of designers, determines the layout. Bloggers, on the other hand, choose their own template and often spend considerable time adjusting the way their blogs look and work. A literary critic will rarely see the binding of a book as being important to its literary quality. A blog, however, cannot be read simply for its writing, but will always be seen as the sum of writing, layout, connections and links, and tempo.