Writing Online

As we are now looking at blogs, blog genres, and blog criteria a good paper to frame our investigation is Danah Boyd’s paper, “A Blogger’s Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium,” published in reconstruction: studies in contemporary culture. From the conclusion:

Early definitions of blogs focused on the structure and content of the output, often using metaphors to connect the emergent with the understood. This approach introduced analytic biases that complicated people’s ability to follow the evolution of blogging and how the practice and values of bloggers shaped the output. By shifting focus to the practice, it is possible to see how blogs are not a genre of communication, but a medium through which communication occurs. This reframing offers a framework in which to analyze how blogging has helped blur accepted distinctions such as between orality and textuality, corporeality and spatiality, private and public.

Key points to keep in mind are that to understand blogging, we must look not only at the product but also at the practices and culture that produces the blog, and how blogging crosses boundaries.

Danah Boyd is a doctoral candidate at Berkeley who researches online communities. She has quite a few papers