Academic Essay

Web logs (blogs) are a relatively new communication technology. How has the development of blogs impacted on communication and information sharing?

Original blogs were link driven pages with a combination of commentary, personal thoughts, essays and links (Blood, 2000). These pages were created only by people who already knew how to make a website. Today, they are much more widely accessed and their content varies from being expressly personal to expressly journalistic, textual to photographic, paid to unpaid, link based, thematic, travel oriented, collaborative etc. (Cohen, 2006). There has been a general trend towards a change in the nature of blogs from filter style to journal style, however they are also emerging as an increasingly important means of public expression and opinion. As a relatively new means of communication technology, they have encountered both criticisms and popularity, and are expected to play an important role in future communication practice.

Listed on a ‘page of only weblogs’ by James Jesse Garnett, editor of Infosift, were the only 23 weblogs known to be in existence at the beginning of 1999. In July of that year, Pitas launched the first ‘build your own weblog’ tool, followed by Blogger and Groksoup in August (Blood, 2000). The launch of these free services enabled individuals to publish their own blogs more quickly and easily. The popularity and prevalence of blogs increased rapidly in the next few years, with research by Technorati (a leading blog search engine) finding the number of blogs doubling every 5 months since 2003, over 22 million blogs currently on line, and 70,000 new blogs being added every day (Allen, 2005).

Supporters of the emergence of blogs believe that they are a form of self expression, a way of making their voices heard with a unique opportunity to exercise one’s right to freedom of speech (Johnstone, 2005). Programs like Blogger and Pitas have given people with little or no knowledge of HTML or Internet technologies the ability to write about anything they want and potentially have a global audience (Allen, 2005). Blogs also encourage collaboration. The participatory nature of writing, response and counterargument on blogs allows for ongoing debate, critical refinement and ‘thinking in progress’. This form of public expression and opinion, developed largely as a result of blogs, is potentially powerful in improving public debate, however it could also be detrimental. Empirical research has shown that online discussions do not work towards consensus, are often short lived with little impact and can easily turn into ‘dialogues of the deaf’ and lead anywhere (Nguyen, 2006). Despite the notion that anyone can share their opinions and ‘be heard’, online participation forums are still dominated by the elite and those on the more advantaged side of the digital divide with a generally higher socio-economic status and social influence (Perkel, 2007).

In modern day society, there is a growing impatience with traditional methods of communication and the consumption of information. People want to find what is relevant to them as quickly as possible (Quinn & Quinn-Allen, 2005). As if in response to this desire for immediacy, blogs are endlessly updated with new thoughts and observations and are primarily concerned with the present (Eesley, 2005). “Online diaries are immediate, visceral and unpolished; qualities that speak to us directly and strike us as true” (Johnstone, 2005). Readers have faith in the authenticity of the blog despite notable absence of any reliable form of authentication. Although blogs are a good environment to read other people’s ideas, those ideas are not always fact based, insightful or politically or culturally correct. It is difficult to tell the difference between truth and fiction and the motivation of the individual blogger is hard to ascertain. Research by Johnstone (2005) suggests that it is because of the personal and seemingly intimate nature of blogs that readers invest their trust in the content presented without the scepticism that is increasingly applied to information from more traditional media sources.

However, as a new means of communication technology, the relationship between the emergent blog and its audience is at times considered to be oppositional (Nguyen, 2006). Traditionally, the right to be ‘published’ has been earned and reliant on literary quality (Gregg, 2006), however these factors are noticeably absent from millions of blogs published on line. Blogs have been criticised as boring, too personal or detailed and too apparently concerned with topics that are thought of as unworthy of public conversation (Cohen, 2006). Blogs never quite address a person (dialogue), never quite address a crowd (speech or public address), and are never quite speaking to oneself (monologue or soliloquy). According to Cohen (2006), bloggers could be considered to be narcissists, as they insist on endlessly remarking in a public fashion on very unremarkable things and publicising their boring lives. “The trouble is not that ordinary people write them, but that these ordinary people have become too visible, precisely in their ‘ordinariness’; their self interested individualism” (Cohen, 2006).

Blogs are reshaping our notion of how content is created and information is distributed throughout the world today. Although blogs encourage people to express their opinions and discuss them with a worldwide audience, the nature and distribution of technology means that this effect has a limited capacity. The shift in blogs from filter style to journal style has seen a rapid increase in publication of biased and subjective information, and the unmediated nature of blogs means that anyone from anywhere can create a blog containing information of little consequence. As a relatively new means of communication technology, they have received both opposition and support with respect to their validity as a credible information source. More recently, the potential longevity of blogs has been realised by industry, advertising, politics and media who are capitalising on commercial and organisational opportunities. It is through these investments and developments, as well as their ever-increasing popularity that blogs will continue to form an integral part of communication in the future.



References

Journal Articles:

Cohen, K. (2006) ‘A Welcome for Blogs’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20(2): 161-173

Johnstone, R. (2005) ‘Spasms of Assertion – The Politics and Aesthetics of Blogging’ Australian Book Review p32-36

Quinn, S. & Quinn-Allan, D. (2005) ‘User generated content and the changing news cycle’ Australian Journalism Review 28(1): 57-70

Nguyen, A. (2006) ‘Journalism in the wake of participatory publishing’ Australian Journalism Review 28(1): 143-155

Gregg, M. (2006) ‘Feeling Ordinary: Blogging as Conversational Scholarship Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20(2): 147-160

Websites:

Perkel, D. (2007) ‘Creativity and gaps in participation: Stories from the field’ http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/node/71 (accessed 8th May 2007)

Sramana, M., Allen, R., & Eesley, C. (2005) ‘What matters: Blogs and their impact on society’ http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200512/index.html (accessed 9th May 2007)

‘Humanizing your blog for intimacy’ http://www.rsspieces.com/2006/10/15/humanizing-a-blog-how-blogging-is-like-b (accessed 9th May 2007)

‘Recruiting the self centred’ http://blogs.targetx.com/targetx/emailminute/?p=124 (accessed 10th May 2007)

Blood, R. (2000) ‘Weblogs: a history and perspective’ http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html (accessed 9th May 2007)