Summary: The “Blogosphere” takes on a form of an iceberg, in that the vast majority of blogs float out of sight and out of mind. Active blogs might represent the conception of blogs in through the public’s perspective, but aren’t representative of blogs in general. It is seen that a “typical blog” is written by “a typical teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on activities/things that happen in her life.” The sense of community in the “Blogosphere” is made into existence within the minds of it’s members in a style that comes from the instant publishing medium itself to create a discursive, transnational, online imagined community. This “Blogosphere” community is based on a new form of journalism practiced by people who probably will never meet each other, yet can engage and interact with each other and even find a shared identity.
Main Ideas and Terms:
1.) Two-thirds of blogs that are created through hosting services are considered abandoned because they haven’t been updated in a couple months.
2.) The “Blogosphere” engages users as both consumers and producers at the same time.
1.) Meatspace: the term used by bloggers to describe the off-line world.
2.) Periphery: the outer limits of an object.
3.) Currentness: the quality of being current or up-to-date.
4.) Diarist Bloggers: write about personal lives and share individual experiences.
5.) Conversational Bloggers: write to educate and inform people and to also start conversations/debates.
Analysis: This article to me was good at expressing not only the authors point of view on this imagined community of the “Blogosphere,” but many different points of view from all different people (Perseus Development Company, Benedict Anderson, Jay Rosen, Senator Trent Lott, Kevin Barbieux). Some of their perspectives have the same main ideas and ideology and the others have completely different ways of looking at it. The article also did a good job at using real world examples of these different perspectives; the newspaper vs blog idea, the rise of blogging through the 9-11 attacks, the fact that a homeless guy can start and run a blog. Although I see these as good things, I also see a bit of bias towards blogging instead of other ways of writing. For example the phrase: “blogging clearly has the upper hand on print and broadcast journalism,” yes it may be a better way of going about writing about different subjects and getting instant gratification but it is not the only way and it might not be an efficient way to do so to other people. It also had a lot of generalizations as well, which I can see as being adaptable for this type of article, but it doesn’t take into account other ways or perspectives of blogging through all of the different types of people that might not blog or do, but go about in a unnatural way.
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