My Research on Blogging!

Currently studying  about blogging this week as well as being new to the system it has really sparked my attention on how  blogging has become part of the mainstream media landscape, being so highly popular and an influential form of web production.  Blogging  has only existed for only 20 years. Before we get into action, your probably thinking what is a blog? Well blogs are commentaries written by one person, groups and corporations on a  daily basis. Bloggers portray personal expressions and describe their personal experiences to an audience. Popular blog topics consists of movies, television, sports, politics, surveys, technology, celebrity, gossip, business etc. Blogs have contributed to the reshuffling of the news media over the past decade for social and political incidences e.g. 9/11, the Iraqi War and the 2004 Asian Tsunami. Both blogging and social media have resulted an emergence on a number of unlimited topics and interests that have served a purpose to people’s life experiences and problems.  In the meantime, I’ve done some research on Howard Rheingold’s whose (a critic, teacher and writer on cultural, social and political implications of modern media). In my studies I have researched a number of sources that explain how the concept of blogging fits into his  vision of a virtual community.

But firstly before jumping ahead, what does virtual community mean? (A virtual community is a community of people sharing common interests, ideas, and feelings over the Internet or other collaborative networks). (Rouse 1996). I also came across an interesting source  blog  titled ”Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of community in the Julie/Julia Project  written by Anita Blanchard from the University of Carolina'' which is a case study that focuses on explaining how blogs can be fitted into virtual communities. This was a stupendous source since the blogger has used a case study of a blog to support her concept of  how blogging fits into virtual communities. Anna explains the following concepts as to how blogging fits in a virtual community in the following example

• Blogs have characteristics of a virtual settlement which determine there being a sense of community’’ from different topics, thoughts and expression posted. She explains that there are ‘’ places for readers to post comments about the blog entries or to email the blog author. This creating… two opportunities for interaction on the blog for the readers’’ one with the blog author and one with other readers making it virtual. (Blanchard,2004) .This fits in with Rheingold’s quote how “millions of us have already built communities, where our identities commingle and interact electronically”(Ludlow, 1996. p. 414).

Rheingold states that “communities can emerge from and exist within computer-linked groups( Ludlow, 1996. P. 420) He also states from his book that “Virtual community sits atop a hierarchy of abstractions-language, technology , computing , networking many to many discussions”.  

(Rheingold, , 1993 . p 347) .These quotes sort of widened my understanding of how a world of blogging does definitely fit in to being a virtual community from the construction of many networks.

Investigating further I came another source which  compares virtual communities to blogs.  It thoroughly provides an understanding of how blogs and communities connect. The book titled 'Modeling and Data Mining Blogs' explains that Bloggers meet in virtual communities called Blogospheres (a conductive platform to build virtual communities based on special interests e.g. . The book categories blogs into two major types ‘’individual’’ and ‘’community’’ blogs. It is stated that individual blogs express thoughts, opinions, offer suggestions and ideas , in comparison to community blogs containing a whole group coming together to share interests, thoughts and discuss various issues.  (Agarwal, N & Liu, H, 2009 p, 28) This example sort of made it clearer to me as to how virtual communities intervene with blogs, since it’s all about networks yet again.

In conclusion my current testimony on what the future holds for blogging is simply  that  this current trend will continue to increase steadily on an upward path continuing to be a cheaper and faster platform to distributing content. Social Media is constantly evolving and is making it a phenomenon all over the globe. My references are all included below! Look forward to sharing you more about what research  has been done as well as discussing things learn't each week from not only my course but many other topics.

Happy Studying! :)

References

1. 1.      Blanchard, A, 2004, Blogs as Virtual Communities: Identifying a Sense of Community in the Julie/Julia Project, Into the Blogosphere, University of North Carolina Charlotte, viewed on 21^st of November 2012.< http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogs_as_virtual.html>
2. 2.      Rouse, M, 2006, Virtual Community, Tech Target, viewed on 21^st of November 2012. <http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/virtual-community>
3. 3.      Ludlow, P, 1996, High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States of America.
4. 4.      Agarwal, N & Liu, H, 2009, Modeling and Data Mining Blogs, Lecture 1, Morgan & Claypool, Chicago.
5. 5.      Rheingold, H , 1993, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Issue 28, Rheingold, United States of Amercia.