Michael at UOW
DIGC101 Reflective Essay

Q: How has the proliferation of the blogosphere allowed otherwise non ‘tech-savvy’ members of the public to communicate and participate in online communities?


To all accounts the Blogosphere is huge, but according to Andrew Keen there were 53 million blogs at the time of writing of his 2007 book Cult of the Amateur (Keen, 2007). Keen also states that this number is doubling every 6 months, meaning that today, there are at least 212 million blogs, if this calculation is correct, making up the blogosphere. While it is highly unlikely that the majority of these are active, in that they are regularly updated, it is still a dizzying amount of readily available information, ideas and communication.


Spurring this rapid growth of blogs are free hosting websites such as Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr. These websites allow users to create a central account, from which the user can create multiple blogs, personalise their blogs appearance and join other such bloggers, creating online communities. These communities then make links with other small communities and the effect snowballs resulting in large, geographically defying communities.


‘Doheny-Farina’s (1996) statement on community:
A community is bound by place, which always includes complex social and environmental necessities. It is not something you can easily join. You can’t subscribe to a community as you subscribe to a discussion group on the net, It must be lived. It is entwined, contradictory, and involves all our senses’ (Jones, 1998)


As the accessibility of online communication and networks has grown, the above statement by Doheny-Farina is now obsolete. Our idea of an active community now encompasses those which occur online. To say that a community must be something that cannot be easily joined is based on traditional, physical implications of the word community. The blogosphere transcends those traditional boundaries. Communities within the blogosphere do not incur any joining rites, they are not secret communities, and they are beyond networks, in which participating members only need knowledge of the other parties involved rather than active involvement between them. The word community, in context relating to the blogosphere, implies that there is participation and an active method of contribution or group communication. This contribution is the joining fee, the price required to be part of the community is to contribute and help the community to expand.


The rapid expansion of the Blogosphere has been bolstered by the target market of the aforementioned blog hosting sites. They have consciously taken out the technological knowledge required of the previous generation of bloggers, which had restricted the blogosphere to the tech-savvy, and industry workers who have dominated the web up until the present.


Wordpress proudly portrays its catchcry at the top of its page, ‘Express yourself. Start a blog’ (screenshot) (Wordpress, accessed 26/08/09). Tumblr and Blogger follow suit with ‘The Easiest Way To Blog’(Tumblr, accessed 26/08/09). and ‘Create a blog. It’s Free’(Blogger, accessed 26/08/09) respectively dominating half their homepages. These sites present themselves as simple ‘type and post’ style hosts, with no exceptional technological expertise required.


This prevalent availability of free, simple-to-use blogging mediums has caused some criticism amongst professionals, previously they were the dominant force in the blogosphere, now they’re being outnumbered by ‘The Cult of The Amateur’ (Keen, 2007). Keen argues that the credibility of information available is being undermined by the ‘amateurish’ sources that are producing it. ‘For these Gen Y utopians, every posting is just another person’s version of the truth; every fiction is just another person’s version of the facts’ (Keen, 2007).


To further deteriorate Keen’s view of the information available on the web, a new style of bite-sized reporting and communication has evolved; Micro-blogging. Microblogging.com describes itself as a site featuring ‘news, reviews and a directory of microblogging sites and applications’ (Microblogging.com, accessed 26/08/09).


The use of microblogging sites such as Twitter has become so mainstream that the United Kingdom’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has released a 20 page guideline detailing how to use twitter for departmental use in the UK government (microblogging.com blog, accessed 26/08/09).

A group of society that has noticeably taken up blogging, and micro-blogging in particular are celebrities, sharing with us the more intimate aspects of their lives. Twitter profiles can be found for music icons Jay Z and Britney Spears, generational Hollywood funny men Ashton Kutcher and Jerry Seinfeld, sports icon Michael Jordan and current US President Barack Obama also has an account. These societal icons are elevating the status of micro-blogging and helping it grow as more members of the public create accounts with the intention of finding out their latest celeb goss.

Danah boyd said about Friendster (an early social networking website); ‘Friendster created a stage for digital flanéurs: a place to see and be seen’. The same applies to celebrity culture’s use of Twitter and other microblogging services. They are increasing their public presence in a way that is un-intrusive, free of charge and easily adaptable to suit their day-to-day needs.


The task that we were set at the beginning of the subject was to ‘craft a specific online presence’. This has involved developing a specific persona around a personal interest, fictitious character or other such appropriate theme. Bloghosting websites catered to this task with their adaptability, customisation and personalisation options, and their content flexibility.


Danah boyd talks of ‘Fakesters’ or false accounts in her discussion of Friendster, ‘from the earliest days, participants took advantage of the system to craft “Fakesters” or non-biographical profiles. Fakesters were created for famous people, fictitious characters, objects, places and locations, identity markers, concepts, animals and communities’ (2007).


In DIGC101, it is evident that the creation of non-biographical profiles has been catered for within the flexibility of the blogging platforms. Adjustable settings like custom URL’s, interchangeable themes and open source html code is available to manipulate the look of the page online. This personalisation has attracted people to the use of blogging platforms with an individualistic idea in mind. However, these features are completely optional, for those with little technological expertise, the standard templates and settings are fine.


Connels Court is one such identity developed in class. Blogging from the perspective of an apartment block, describing its life with such lines as ‘I am occupied by some of Cronulla’s finest residents. If you haven’t had the pleasure of their company just yet, allow me to introduce them’ (Connels Court, accessed 26/08/09) is only possible with the adjustment of major features such as a change of theme, creative description and different media content.


‘Citizen journalism is a euphemism for what you or I might call “journalism by non-journalists” ‘ (Keen, 2007). Keen is describing here what he see’s as the decline of credible information, ‘citizen journalists have no formal training or expertise, yet they routinely offer up opinion as fact, rumour as reportage and innuendo as information’ (2007). This type of journalism has been encouraged by the accessibility of easy to use distribution platforms like blogs and social networking sites.


Newspie is one such news blog developed in class, ‘an independently run blog about issues concerning local and national communities‘ (Newspie, accessed 26/08/09). Utilising the one to many method of communication, Newspie delivers multi-media news to thousands of potential readers. This volume of potential exposure is a reason why citizen journalists are turning to blogs as their main form of communication.


As the accessibility to cheap, easy to use blogging platforms has grown, so too has the number of public members using them to blog about their lives, current issues and societal matters. They are forming communities within communities and adding to the blogosphere through their posts. Microblogging has provided celebrities with the ability to increase their public presence and in turn these celebrities are helping to increase the stature of microblogging platforms like Twitter. Bloghosting platforms Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr have enabled members of the public to express themselves in previously unattainable ways. They can now adopt personalities (Connels Court), pseudonyms of anonymity or become a journalist (Newspie) with thousands of internet users as their audience.

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References:

Offline:

  • Boyd d, 2007, None Of This Is Real: Identity and Participation in Friendster, in ‘Structures of Participation in Digital Culture’ ed. Karaganis J, Social Science Research Council, New York
  • Keen, A, 2007, The Cult of the Amateur: How Todays Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London
  • Jones S G, 1998, Cybersociety 2.0: Revisiting Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, Sage Publishing, Thousand Oaks, California

Online:

Posted 2 years ago