Blogging

Blogging has profoundly influenced not only the nature of the internet today, but also the nature of modern communication, despite being a genre invented less than a decade ago. This book-length study of a now everyday phenomenon provides a close look at blogging while placing it in a historical, theoretical and contemporary context.

Scholars, students and bloggers will find a lively survey of blogging that contextualises blogs in terms of critical theory and the history of digital media. Authored by a scholar-blogger, the book is packed with examples that show how blogging and related genres are changing media and communication. It gives definitions and explains how blogs work, shows how blogs relate to the historical development of publishing and communication and looks at the ways blogs structure social networks and at how social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook incorporate blogging in their design. Specific kinds of blogs discussed include political blogs, citizen journalism, confessional blogs and commercial blogs.

• Acknowledgements p. vii
• Introduction p. 1
• 1 What is a Blog? p. 4
• How to Blog p. 5
• Three Blogs p. 9
• Defining Blogs p. 17
• A Brief History of Weblogs p. 22
• 2 From Bards to Blogs p. 31
• Orality and Literacy p. 32
• The Introduction of Print p. 36
• Print, Blogging and Reading p. 39
• Printed Precedents of Blogs p. 40
• The Late Age of Print p. 42
• A Modern Public Sphere? p. 46
• Hypertext and Computer Lib p. 48
• Technological Determinism or Cultural Shaping of Technology? p. 52
• 3 Blogs, Communities and Networks p. 57
• Social Network Theory p. 59
• Distributed Conversations p. 61
• Technology for Distributed Communities p. 64
• Other Social Networks p. 68
• Publicly Articulated Relationships p. 75
• Colliding Networks p. 77
• Emerging Social Networks p. 80
• 4 Citizen Journalists? p. 84
• Bloggers' Perception of Themselves p. 87
• When it Matters Whether a Blogger is a Journalist p. 89
• Objectivity, Authority and Credibility p. 91
• First-hand Reports: Blogging from a War Zone p. 95
• First-hand Reports: Chance Witnesses p. 98
• Bloggers as Independent Journalists and Opinionists p. 101
• Gatewatching p. 103
• Symbiosis p. 108
• 5 Blogs as Narratives p. 111
• Fragmented Narratives p. 111
• Goal-oriented Narratives p. 113
• Ongoing Narratives p. 115
• Blogs as Self- exploration p. 120
• Fictions or Hoaxes? Kaycee Nicole and lonelygirl15 p. 121
• 6 Blogging Brands p. 127
• The Human Voic p. 128
• Advertisements on Blogs p. 131
• Micropatronage p. 135
• Sponsored Posts and Pay-to-Post p. 137
• Corporate Blogs p. 141
• Engaging Bloggers p. 147
• Corporate Blogging Gone Wrong p. 150
• 7 The Future of Blogging p. 155
• Implicit Participation p. 156
• Perils of Personalized Media p. 157
• References p. 161
• Blogs Mentioned p. 170
• Index p. 173