A number of interesting subjects came up in the reading "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog" by Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd. In general I found the evolution and explosion of the weblog very interesting. More specifically I thought the most interesting topic in the reading was about why people blog and the ideas of mediated voyeurism and mediated exhibitionism. I probably never would have been able to come up with a real good reason as to why people blog prior to reading this piece but these topics were new, interesting and connected a lot of things in our society that I otherwise wouldn’t have thought to connect.
The main connection I learned about was the emergence of blogging and the 1992 presidential election in which Bill Clinton had a groundbreaking campaign strategy: to look like a real person. In doing so, he and MTV (with shows such as "The Real World" and the town hall debates for the presidential election in 1992) seem to have opened the door for a cultural revolution in which "American Culture became obsessed with both making celebrities into regular people...and making regular people into celebrities..." This is something that has intensified over the last decade and has not only given people things to blog about, but has most likely driven people to blog, with hopes of, or the potential to become a sort of online celebrity.
That want or need for people in today’s culture to want to look into other people’s lives and have other people look into their live’s has led to the blogging explosion. Along with this explosion came the expectation of truth in blogs. This is another aspect of online networking that I had never really thought about. In reading about the woman that blogged assuming the identity of a teenager with leukemia, I can’t say I was surprised. I was, however, surprised when I read that it cause an outrage with those who had followed the blog believing it was a real person. Perhaps it’s because I’m more cynical about the world, especially the online world, which is a trait I think a lot of people my age have. This topic was brought up in class, though I don’t remember by whom, but people our age have used the internet as more of a tool for entertainment so when we see something like the story of the fake blog, we don’t take it as personally as others, most likely people only a few years younger than us. Though I would say there are some moral issues involved in purposely misleading that many people, but that’s another issue.
As I continue to think about it, this article really made me realize how prevalent blogging is, even if someone doesn’t have a true blog. Many people blog, according to the article, for many reasons, one being to build social networks. Social networking is everywhere online. What’s the difference between updating your blog and updating your facebook or myspace page? I would say not much, probably nothing. This showed me I’ve been blogging for a lot longer than I thought. I figured I starting blogging when this class started, but really it was when I joined facebook. Go figure.
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