E-publishing – Week 4

Blogging

So – this week it’s to be a blog about blogging! As someone who until recently thought that ‘twitter’ was something that the birds did in the trees, it’s a little ironic, not to say ambitious, to be attempting a blog about the art of blogging. Still, here goes.

In class this week we explored:

1. what is a ‘blog’?
2. why do people blog?
3. positives and negatives of blogging
4. commenting on others’ blogs

What is a ‘blog’?

According to Robin Good, “a blog is a form of personal expression that is characterized by:
A list of dated news items, listed in reverse chronological order, authored by one or more individuals.The tone is informal and the blogger speaks generally in her own natural voice and tone.”

So a blog is a kind of on-line diary, or journal. In a way, it’s a bit egocentric, isn’t it? I mean, people have always kept diaries to record thoughts and feelings. It used to be, though, that we kept them secret, often, in fact, literally under lock and key so that no-one could read them. Now we apparently believe that everyone should be interested in what we have to say!

I think the thing that struck me most about the idea of a blog, though, is its possibilities for turning on-line communication into ‘conversations’. Where a newspaper or TV programme or website is pretty much one-way communication, the blog allows for easy, immediate comment, visible to all. That feedback then becomes part of the communication, creating a kind of dialogue.

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Why do people blog?

I saw two bits of news about blogs recently that brought home the potential influence of blogging.
The first is that, apparently, Sarah Brown, wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has five times the number of followers on Twitter that there are members of the Labour Party! (Mail on-line article dated 29 September 2009).

The second was a story on SkyNews.com about how a storm of Twitter protests had forced a climbdown by Trafigura lawyers over a ‘super-injunction’ on the Guardian newspaper, preventing the paper from publishing details of a question to be tabled in parliament. Within hours of the Guardian publishing the fact that they couldn’t publish details (a bit like newspapers in Germany in the build up to the 2nd world war leaving blanks in the papers to show where censored items would have been!), details of the company, the MP, the question and the case that underpinned it were all over the blogosphere and the injunction was no longer enforceable.

Now, Sarah Brown is an ex-public relations guru and, presumably, understands very well how to influence public opinion. Equally, the Guardian presumably knew exactly what it was doing when it let everyone know that it couldn’t publish something. So the potential influence of blogs and their like is recognised by powerful, influential people in politics, in PR and in the communications industry itself.

In addition, a blog is a communication direct from the author to the reader. There are no filters - no editors to decide which 'soundbites' they'll print, no risk of someone misquoting or misrepresenting what you've said, and the only person trying to 'spin' your words is yourself.

Why should we wonder, therefore, that everyone from Barak Obama to Barry ‘Obson (my mum’s next door neighbour in Yorkshire, Hi Barry) is blogging?

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Positives and negatives

But just because everyone’s doing something, does that necessarily make it a good thing? Old politicians blogging to try to appeal to a younger demographic is a bit like your dad dancing with your best friend at a wedding – embarrassing to watch but strangely compelling.

In class we touched on what might be called the ‘ethics’ of blogging. If enough people say something, eventually it becomes a kind of ‘received truth’ (hence, I guess, the number of sites devoted to various conspiracy theories) – everybody’s saying it, so it must be true. The problem is, there’s no check on what’s written in a blog. There’s no editor, no reviewer, no publishing company libel lawyers waiting in the wings. And, as Eben pointed out, by the time ‘the blogosphere’ has picked up on something, it’s almost impossible to trace a story back to its source.

On the positive side, though, the ‘conversational’ nature of blogs means that truly public discussion and debate are possible, possibly for the first time. That, combined with the speed of communication now possible, should mean that important issues can be subject to invigorating debate, with competing opinions aired and commented on in their turn.

So, an attempt to manipulate the way we think, or the opportunity to ensure that everyone gets their say? You decide. Me, I’ll just keep blogging (even though probably no-one’s listening!)

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Commenting on blogs

I don’t know how everyone else found it, but I think the most difficult thing that Eben’s asked us to do so far has been to comment on other class members’ blogs! It felt so presumptuous, somehow, to be saying what I thought about these blogs – why should anyone care what I think! Why should it have been more difficult than leaving a comment on a stranger’s blog? Don’t know, but it was!

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