CREATE FREE BLOG |
BLOGGING AS A FORM OF JOURNALISM |
Weblogs, or blogs, are online journals. While definitions vary, we define blogs as a series of archived Internet posts typically characterized by brief texts entered in reverse chronological order and generally containing hypertext links to other sites recommended by the author. Some blogs utilize photos and other media. Blogs combine the immediacy of up-to-the-minute posts, latest first, with a strong sense of the author's personality, expertise, and point of view. Unlike most mainstream journalism in which efforts at objectivity influence presentation, blogs are unabashedly partisan, infused with authors' assessments,assumptions, and attitudes. Blogging has become enormously popular, with an estimated 500,000 sites currently in existence and predicted exponential growth . Much media attention has focused on blogging, in part because it is seen by some as a new, grassroots formof journalism . For example, while the "BaghdadBlogger" had no official media affiliations, his onsitereportage during the war in Iraq was closely followed by Western readers. Blogging has also provedinfluential in shaping the news.
The fall of United States Senator Trent Lott has been attributed to bloggers who exposed Lott's segregationist rhetoric and continued to rally against him despite an initial lack of interest by the institutional media. Howard Dean’s bid for the Democratic nomination for Presidentraised millions of dollars in part through “Blog for America,” written by Dean’s campaign manager, staffers, and guests, with occasional posts from the candidate himself. Blog sites devoted to politics and punditry, and to sharing technical developments (such as Slashdot), receive thousands of hits a day.Media attention usually goes to these heavy-hitters, but the vast majority of blogs are written by ordinary people for much smaller audiences. In this paper, we report the results of an ethnographic investigation of blogging in a sample of such "ordinary bloggers.” We investigate blogging as a form of personal communication, with a specific interest in uncovering a range of motivations that individuals have for creating and maintaining blogs. We discuss implications for improving current blogging tools and how such tools may affect the continuing evolution of the Internet and the ways it is used in everyday life.
Blogging has historical precedents in paper journals, diaries, and chronicles. Such documents provide a chronological account with a strong personal point of view and clear sense of audience. In the Middle Ages, to take but one historical example, the renegade activities of the illiterate Basque adventurer Lope de Aguirre were chronicled by several of his men as Aguirre pillaged his way through parts of the New World. These accounts were colored by the need to stay on the good side of the treacherous Aguirre as well as by the writers’ notions of what would appeal to their audiences. One enticed his readers: “[Here] you will find cruelty, passion, and incidents arousing great pity…” As we will see, today’s bloggers write with just as much attention to audience as did the ancient chroniclers.
Several blogging software packages, some free, some commercial, are available for easy download. This software can be used for purposes other than blogging, such as homepages, although we did not investigate those uses. Our informants used a range of systems including Blogger, MovableType, Xanga, Radio
UserLand, and Blurty. Three informants wrote their blogs directly in HTML because they preferred more control over formatting. Some informants had started on Blogger and upgraded to MovableType, a more powerful system. Some used only the most basic features of the blogging software; others used more advanced features to track who was reading their blog, to collect statistics on the number of hits they received, to discover who linked to their blogs, to change the format of the blog, or to post photos. One informant used his own software to include his location and current MP3 selection on each post. During the course of the research several people moved to the use of more advanced features as their blogging activities developed. Two informants wrote Perl scripts for advanced features such as adding photos and tracking visitors.
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