It seems that a popular view of blogging promoted by the BBC is of "citizen journalism" and how blogging and traditional media can inform each other - see a previous posting for example.
This belief is raised once more in an article by Dan Gillmor called Why we are all reporters now ( BBC News: Technology).
It's a similar situation to a posting I did the other day that challenges the stereotype of work-related blogs.
This belief is raised once more in an article by Dan Gillmor called Why we are all reporters now ( BBC News: Technology).
It's a similar situation to a posting I did the other day that challenges the stereotype of work-related blogs.
Unless it's me, I don't get the impression that many people actually "get" blogging. Of course there are some blogs that set out to influence political processes (see article above by Gillmor and a previous posting on blogging politicians), blogging can be used to improve corporate-customer relations (see yesterday's blog), and, there are clearly, from time-to-time, examples of a malicous use of blogging to deal with a difficult situations.
However, I just don't get the impression that the vast majority of blogs are about these sort of things. In my experience blogs are demonstrative that we all have something to share about our lives and blogging is just one of many ways of doing this.
This is not traditional journalism by any stretch of the imagination; nor is it for commerical gain.
Blogging, on the whole, seems to be something quite different but it may be sometime before that becomes widespread opinion. What is more, if blogging is not seen as challenging the status quo or a means to commercial gain then only bloggers themselves will appreciate what it means to them.
2 comments:
Unless it's me, I don't get the impression that many people actually "get" blogging.
It's not just you.
I've noticed non-readers of blogs fall into three basic camps:
1) what's a blob?
2) all blogs are written by stupid teenagers and as such are worthless displays of public foolishness with nothing political to say
3) all blogs are political and written with intent to destabilise the government and economy and send the world spiralling into chaos
2) and 3) are often held simultaneously by the same person.
It seems that most people who've never read a blog and even a few who regularly read blogs are confusing form with content.
I totally agree with you Spike!
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