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Communication 491-02 Weblogs - Notes |
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Weblogs
Dave Winer has formally wagered that by 2007, more readers will get news from blogs than from The New York Times.
http://inmyexperience.com/archives/000116.shtml
There are about 100,000 of these around. Number of journalists writing them: http://www.cyberjournalist.net/cyberjournalists.html
And a number of them are engaging in something jstic
http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/printArticle.pl?path=/articles/2002/06/16/1023864377517.html
- been around since 1998 (early ones Winer, Gillmor) and unique to Web
- dependent on software (show course weblog)
- diary-like, organised down from most recent
- depend on hyperlinking (key aspect)
- fairly informal, ephemeral
- personal in tone
- either personal diaries (cf home pages) or informative/commenting on Web
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/dan_gillmor/ejournal/
follow up on writing about weblogs:
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/resources/personal/
Big theme is that they’re symptomatic of change in culture, in the media and in what journalism can do.
Widening of defn of journalism
Many-to-many journalism (complex adaptive systems)
Open source journalism
Ideas of public/private in journalism—vulnerability of indiv journalist
Interactivity
Schudson, News in the Next Century: put weblogs in context of challenges/opportunities of online, longer history of journalism, longer history of culture.
Historically: journalists only professionals since late 19C. Why should they have monopoly on reporting?
à professionalisation:
guarantee of indep
guarantee of expertise (but surely experts on Middle East are those who live there?)
regular service—but online, can turn to range of sources
is an amateur as good a journalist? Ethics (truth-telling, fact-checking)
many-to-many
Gillmor:
This a big challenge for many journalists. Challenges their authority.
John Hiler in Microcontentnews writes about this:
http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/borgjournalism.htm
complex adaptive systems/group consciousness taking stories further than indiv journalists ever could
example of many-to-many journalism in UK is Slugger:
open source jsm
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/10/08/geek_journalism/print.html
Personal space; issues there about what is private and what is public…ie weblogs fit into wider social phenomenon of change
Interesting that a number of webloggers use a pseudonym: eg Junius, so writing as a persona. But still much more personal than trad jsm. It’s a lived-in space, where someone working out who they are online. Many commentators say read weblogs to engage with people, can see who someone is by their links, and many bloggers say they discover themselves online:
Powazek
Journalism sometimes uncomfortable about having human dimension, of entertaining, fulfilling desires, sharing human drama (Schudson, p.12).
Weblogs, with the vulnerability of the writer and invitation to participate in their lives, no vicariously, but in contact, in social engagement.
Sept 11: Edrants
Interactivity
Hiler again: viral dimension
Guardian – more interactive, not claiming to know what happened, but providing interesting material for people. Diff relation constructed there