Blogging

Redefining Blogs And Blogging

Early efforts to define and analyze blogs based on structural characteristics and content are most valuable to outsiders and machine learners who want to understand how their results relate to web pages and other forms of communication and text production. How are the broader concepts compared? However, they do not explain the actual practice of blogging, why blogging became popular, or how results change as more people start blogging. Focusing the analysis on practice and the resulting medium provides important insights into this phenomenon.

The practice of blogging involves the creation of digital content for the purpose of being shared asynchronously with a perceptive audience. Is it n-to-? Is? The practice of sharing content by a certain number of bloggers with an unspecified number of readers. n-to-? The model is not limited to blogs; Radio, television and print media practices also take this form. All n-to-? In practices, audiences may be in the millions, but in reality there is a power law distribution of audiences where most bloggers create content for a very small number of readers (Marlow 2005). While some bloggers aim to gain a large number of readers, most bloggers aim to blog for people they know and provide an opportunity for like-minded strangers to visit their site. What they share can be as diverse as the communication itself, from ideas to to-do lists, philosophies to references to digital objects.

Blogging is an active practice in which bloggers create semi-regular expressions that build on each other under the same digital umbrella. Each new expression is linked to the previous expression. We compile these expressions and record them in our blog. However, blogs don’t just collect anyone’s opinions; Each blog only collects the opinions of bloggers associated with that particular blog. While most blogs capture the voice of a single blogger, some capture the opinion of a group.

Blogs differ from static websites because they capture ongoing expression of opinion, not a changing static output. They differ from community tools because expressions are captured locally, not in a shared space. In this way, bloggers begin to identify with their blog and see it as themselves (Reid 2005). A blog is not the same as a blogger, but an aspect of blogging can be captured through the practice of blogging.

What makes blogs difficult to analyze is the fact that blogs are both a product of blogging and a medium through which bloggers express their opinions. Blogs are created for bloggers to blog. And yet, they blog just for the sake of blogging. Let’s think about this from the perspective of another medium: radio is a medium through which people express themselves, but the act of speaking for the purpose of communicating is not radio, and the product of speaking is not radio. Radio comes into existence when people’s words are broadcast on the air. And yet the blog is a by-product of expression and the medium itself.

In the context of communication, media are the channels through which people communicate or express themselves to others. Examples of media include paper, radio, and television. In the words of McLuhan (1964), media are “extensions of man” that allow people to express themselves. Blogs are exactly that: they allow people to expand into a connected digital environment that is often considered intangible. A blog is both a digital entity and a medium through which bloggers express themselves.

Conceptualizing the blog as a medium rather than a genre suggests that blogs are closer to paper than diaries. What defines a blog is not conventions or types of content, but the framework through which people can express themselves. People record their lives on paper. The same thing applies for blogs.

People make notes on paper. The same thing applies for blogs. Papers and blogs are used for everything from making shopping lists to publishing groundbreaking research, from creating illustrations to advertising furniture, from tracking personal bills to writing gossip columns. Media is flexible, allowing all forms of expression and constantly evolving.

Media are also linked to and based on other media. Language is a medium, and the output of language in the media environment gives rise to paper, radio, television and blogs. Concepts of media have generally focused on distribution channels, but some media have multiple distribution channels; For example, television was distributed via satellite, cable, and airwaves. These days, distribution is also done through the Internet, which has changed the distribution possibilities of most media – radio and telephone are obvious examples.

Media is greatly influenced by its distribution channels, but it cannot be compared. Access tools also play an important role in shaping media, but they do not define them. Wireless media has survived the transition to wireless devices such as large furniture, vehicle parts, and handheld devices. Media vary in part based on their format (text, audio, image, video, etc.), but the format does not define the medium (i.e., not all audio is radio). For McLuhan (1964), media is defined by what it enables and how it helps people go beyond the limitations of their bodies. A medium is defined by the practices it supports and how we identify with those practices. As Carl said, “Blogging is what we do when we say, ‘We blog.'”

The boundaries of blogging are socially constructed, not technically defined. Still, technique plays an important role in shaping the resulting look. For this reason, the capabilities of popular blogging tools have shaped definitional efforts. However, as researchers attempting to define categories have learned, trait-driven category definitions are limited and flawed (Lakoff 1987). Attempts to define the category “sports” on its own characteristics will always fail. Neither a category nor a medium can be defined by their characteristics, although there are prototypical examples of both. This prototype blog has many features supported by the most popular tools: comments, links, trackbacks, timestamps, reverse-chronological posts, syndication feed, etc. Prototypes have a communication effect, but they should not be the basis of analysis. Prototype characteristics do not define the boundaries of the medium, nor do they express values or standard practices. As technology changes, so do the characteristics of prototypes.

Blogs also have no restrictions and do not indicate common values or goals, even if they do. Early adopters believed that blogging meant speaking openly to a large audience, without any restrictive authority or editorial control. As educational institutions become interested in adopting blogging as a potential market, content-moderated blogs are on the rise, but these are still blogs. Blogs have specific values, but there are no universal values that all bloggers adopt. For example, some people believe that individual conversations should not be quoted without permission, while others blog entire IM chats and claim they have the right to do so because it is their blog. There is a lot of confusion among journalistically minded bloggers about whether bloggers must edit their posts, how attribution should work, whether bloggers have an obligation to disclose affiliations or financial incentives, etc. These are values that are specific to bloggers with certain habits, but are not universally shared. The goals and intentions of individual bloggers influence their activities and therefore their media.

As mentioned above, devices have shaped the style and characteristics of blogging. Tools are developed to support specific values and practices. Some services like WordPress and Movable Type are tailored to the needs of more audience-oriented practitioners, while services like LiveJournal and Xanga focus on community-oriented bloggers, and Blogger focuses on providing a simple interface to support novice bloggers. Concentrates. These features have a significant impact on blogs created with each of these tools, but bloggers can also choose specific tools to meet their needs. While most bloggers use the most common tools, it is not necessary to use these tools to participate in the practice and create a blog. Tools are so widespread and so recognizable in shaping the medium that their structure can easily be confused with the structure of the medium. However, as the number of people blogging increases, the tools evolve and diversify with practice.

Redefining the blog as a culturally driven medium in which blogging can be practiced makes it possible to understand the diversity of structure and content. As McLuhan pointed out, the message is not the medium. “Often, the ‘content’ of a medium obscures the nature of that medium” (McLuhan 1995: 152). Such redefinition resolves many of the tensions and confusions associated with blogs, while also providing a framework for thinking about how blogs blur textual and verbal, physical and spatial, public and private.

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