Blogging

Blog And Blogger

This article explains the main features of blogs and bloggers and their evolution from the early days of blogging in the 1990s to the present day. A blog is a type of website that can be used to present introspective reflections or observations of current events. Blogs can serve as a means of political mobilization, journalistic efforts, open literary projects, or ongoing self-expression, and in some cases combine several of these functions. However, there is little consensus as to what characteristics make a blog a blog. Most writers emphasize features like frequent publishing of content, reverse chronological display of blog posts, and storing previous posts.

Blogs as Technologies

Blogs are technology in two ways. In the first sense, they are material and cultural products that stabilize emergent social relations and processes. That is, blogs are the result of interactions between actors that shape their material properties and the way we interpret their meaning and significance in particular times and places. Viewing blogs in this way highlights their materiality and defines them as a medium or format. It is therefore optimal to analyze how bloggers learn to manage the characteristics of their blogs technically and cognitively, and how they integrate these characteristics into a range of everyday activities and situations. Blogs can also be considered as technology in the sense of what Michel Foucault would call “technologies of the self”, that is, practices or techniques that allow individuals to shape their bodies (and themselves) to reach certain states of being. Allows. In this light, blogs are techniques for self-representation. They allow bloggers to not only create their own website but also create their own identity. From this perspective, the story of a blog is as much about its medium as it is about its users and the identities they create through the site. The practices of self-representation that define blogs are not entirely new, and scholars have focused on blogs’ relationship with other practices that preceded them, particularly journaling and content creation.

These two senses of technology are dependent on each other. Blogs (as artifacts) shape the practices through which bloggers’ identities emerge (as technologies of the self), just as these practices of self-representation shape blogging for bloggers. Blogs and blogger identities are therefore based on mutual representations of the self and sites with specific technologies and physical features that support them. These interdependent identities have undergone significant changes since the emergence of blogs in the mid-1990s.

Early Blogs

The development of blogs began in the mid-1990s when a group of people working in the software, technology, and web development industries in the United States created websites whose purpose was to annotate and provide a set of content found on the web . The creators of these websites placed great importance on the selection of hyperlinks and they provided short descriptive comments for them. These sites were called filters of the web and were frequently updated to discuss news, trends and information about technology, the Internet and web design. Most of these sites had one common feature: the most recent updates were posted in reverse chronological order, above earlier updates.

Those who created such websites also created an identity for themselves. For example, they discussed how to describe themselves as practitioners of a type of online activity that was new to them. Thus, he coined the terms weblogger, blogger, pre-surfer and weblogger. In these definitions, the technology (i.e., both the practice and the product) of blogging was associated with a particular type of subject: a rational, unique individual who could translate his or her personality into a meaningful online navigation sequence for the reader. These early definitions of blogs and bloggers changed in the late 1990s when software programs to manage and view these websites became available. The advent of automated tools allowed other communities of Web users to develop blogs and create new identities for both themselves and their websites.

An important element in this process was the introduction of Blogger in 1999. With the help of tools like Blogger, web users began to use blogs not just to filter web content but to continue the age-old practices that had shaped journaling. From this perspective, the Web can help users develop a special relationship with themselves based on constant contemplation and discussion of everyday events. In this way, blogs absorbed the creative impulses of diverse user communities and became a medium for online diarists to express their topical positions. By the turn of the century, this mentality had become dominant among blogs and bloggers. In the early days of the new millennium, technology writers and journalists generally praised blogs for their ability to communicate their ideas to the general web user population.

Rise of News and Political Blogs

Apart from the availability of software, other factors also contributed to establishing a new identity for blogs and bloggers. For example, the September 11, 2001 attacks and the US invasion of Afghanistan were two significant events that changed the landscape of blogging in the United States. Expressing opinions on these events became a task for those who felt they had no outlet other than the Internet. This type of blog came to be known first as war blog and then as political blog. From this perspective, blogs were an ideal medium for filtering the Internet and discussing public matters while providing commentary on the blogger’s private life. This particular use of blogging required rethinking the identity of those doing it. In this way, the term blogger acquired political significance.

In the early 2000s, mainstream media coverage defined bloggers as a new type of political observer. Inspired by similar ideas, some journalists use blogs to improve journalism by pushing traditional media agendas with alternative information, keeping alive stories ignored by news organizations, and building more horizontal relationships with readers. Explored the possibility of doing. In this way, the relationship between self-expression and new forms of journalism and political expression became embedded in the technology of blogging: its artefacts and practices.

Monetization and Competition

When blogs became a staple of news sites and political campaigns, some individuals and organizations considered the possibility of their sites becoming a steady source of income. For many bloggers, becoming a full-time blogger became a major goal. For this purpose, he started experimenting with methods of generating income. For example, some bloggers ask their readers to donate to their website. Others implemented advertising models. According to proponents of this approach, blogging allows enterprising individuals to carve out a niche and make a living online. In this way, it becomes possible to capture the economic value of the time bloggers spend creating content and sharing their passion on the Internet. In this process, the blogosphere has been clearly defined as a market for attention.

Inspired by this approach, in the mid-2000s some entrepreneurs founded companies dedicated to creating groups and networks of blogs dedicated to specialized content. Organizations emerged that combined the cultural power of blogging with the entrepreneurial spirit behind many individual blogs. Projects attempting to turn blogs into profitable enterprises and companies, such as Gawker (2003), HuffPost (2005), and Weblogs, Inc. (2003), were the result of this larger process. This led to significant changes in the identity of blogs and bloggers, with many blogs joining market-based competition and bloggers coming to be defined as entrepreneurs.

Since the mid-2000s, blogging has fragmented and has come to be understood not as a general phenomenon but as a niche and subculture, each with its own code of conduct and rules. This concept of blogging and the rise of specific types of subblogs (mommy blogs, video blogs, gadget blogs, etc.) in the mid-2000s can be situated in a context characterized by the proliferation of cultural discourses that compel bloggers to do so. We do. They see themselves as neoliberal entrepreneurs who complete online market transactions with others. In the late 2000s, blogs faced another major threat that further shaped their identity: the rise of social media platforms that sought to enhance and replace blogs in significant ways. While blogs are often referred to as social media, new platforms such as Facebook and Twitter posed a major challenge for blogs. This was because blogs were easy to use and did not require a significant investment of time and effort. The Economist (2010) noted the slow growth of blogs in the late 2000s, saying that “the empire is in decline.” With this in mind, bloggers worked to redefine the identity of blogs within the reorganized web ecology.

Some people view a blog as a website with sufficient specificity. h. As a website whose characteristics are quite different from other types of websites. Blogs, in particular, allow the sharing of longer posts in a web environment where contrast is emphasized. Some bloggers therefore argue that blogs can complement other social media platforms in important ways. For example, limiting the size of posts to fit within restrictions such as Twitter’s character limit may discourage self-contribution.

A related argument is that blogs remain valuable because of their unique characteristics, which allow unique interactions within specific communities of practice and communication with certain segments of the general public. This argument views bloggers as entrepreneurs who engage in market transactions with others to establish an online presence. To support this effort, various business strategies are used (e.g., advertising, sponsored posts) that blur the line between self-expression and self-promotion. Blogging communities that typically have high levels of activity (e.g., cooking, fashion, knitting) are used as examples to support this argument.

Defining Blogs And Blogger Identity

A significant body of research has attracted attention to the specific construction of blogs in international contexts. In many places, the American imagination described above served as a reference point that many bloggers attempted to emulate. More specifically, bloggers adopted this model to understand local issues. Thus, in many places blogs took over the identity of existing websites. For example, localization of blogs through names related to stereotypical idioms was important to the early development of blogs in some parts of the world. In other situations, bloggers used blogs to create their own sites and alternative identities for themselves. Adrienne Russell and Nabil Ekchaibi described the experiences of bloggers in countries such as Australia, China, Italy, Morocco, and Russia, and concluded that blogs may be conceptualized differently than in the United States.

Similarly, Ignacio Siles analyzes the development of blogs in France and shows how French bloggers regarded blogs as a way of reviving the underlying French propensity for self-expression, which was originally called pages persos (personal page) and online diaries. In this way, being a blogger was also a way of connecting with the country’s literary past. In France, bloggers continue to understand blogging as an opportunity to capture, expose, and revive the practices of self-expression that have shaped the country’s history and imagination. Blog and blogger identity are mutually defined. In other words, a blogger’s identity on the Internet should be thought of as a process of mutual constitution between a particular type of artwork and a particular practice of shaping the self. As blogs are used to share different types of content on the Internet, the blogger identity has acquired new means of identification. Thus, today’s characterization of blogs and bloggers includes a wide collection of meanings and practices. For example, in recent years researchers have discussed how blogs are embedded in larger histories of gender discrimination and unpaid labour.

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