- April 21, 2014
- Posted by: essay
- Category: Term paper writing
It is known that today blogging is very popular among the Internet users. With a large number of new bloggers that emerge in the blogosphere each day, both teens and adults are involved in the process of communication. According to Shirley R. Steinberg and Michael Kehler, these digital practices “produce both a physical and virtual experience for individuals as well as a form of identity unknown to any other generation” (419). It has been found that blogs (or Weblogs) are considered to be one of the oldest forms of new media. Today blogs offer the Internet users of any age group “a unique online format to create their own personal web space” (Steinberg & Kehler 419). Blog culture is the term used by Web users to describe the cultural aspects of blogs. Bloggers have the opportunity to view post comments on their blogs, and the information, provided by the Internet users, public opinions and media expressions are very interesting to their online audience.
The most popular blogs are those blogs in which the web users can express their informed opinions, adhering to the major principles held the online audience of this or that blog. Blog culture is focused on the bloggers’ ability to write well, infusing not only wit and humor, but also critical thinking skills that play a significant role in gaining an online audience and sustaining popularity. According to Shirley R. Steinberg and Michael Kehler, “blogs foster four key elements of participatory culture”(420). First of all, blogs foster formal and informal affiliations which depend on the blogger’s cultural traits and to whom he or she allows to view or post to his (her) blog. Secondly, blogs foster the use of expressions as the majority of today’s bloggers prefer to reinvent what and how posting can appear on their blogs by infusing additional cultural elements such as music, embedding videos and form “other esthetic elements and creations unique to blogs” (Steinberg & Kehler 420). Thirdly, blogs foster collaborative problem-solving because the bloggers and the Web users are ready to respond to different issues and tasks that have an enormous impact not only on their personal lives, but also on social and communal lives in the physical realm. Fourthly, blogs foster the so-called circulations in which the majority of today’s bloggers have selected, determined and shaped “the flow and popularity of media in and beyond the digital realm”, influencing their political campaigns, physical communities, TV and radio production, and social policies (Steinberg & Kehler 420).
In fact, blogs can be viewed as the media mode of choice used for criticizing other forms of media by defining certain distortions of facts, false reports, and identifying the misinformation provided by the major news media conglomerates. In other words, blogs are specially designed “to give voice to individuals otherwise lost or unheard in the physical world” (Steinberg & Kehler 420).
Today there is a large number of blogs and “the blogging population is far more diverse than it was only a few years ago”, according to Meredith G. Farkas (16). The major types of blogs defined by the researchers include filters (the blogs that are used to filter the information from the Web in the form of commentaries on some interesting sites), personal journals (the blogs which describe the everyday life of a blogger), and knowledge logs (the blogs specially designed to create original knowledge on the Web).