Analysis: Lampa discusses a few different types of bloggers. The two major types are those who use blogging as a public diary and those who use it to discuss and promote news. Both have their pros/cons and are valid parts of the blogosphere. The news bloggers are a very small percentage of the blogging community but are vital to readers. They provide people with a way to get information form news sites and a commentary about the article may be talking about. This helps to spread the information about a particular subject while, simultaneously, providing a point of view that isn’t being paid for by a corporation. It is also easy to find several news sources that say the same thing about a topic. A blogger’s perspective could be vastly different and provide a new way of looking at the article. They can also provide an inside look into political or international issues. The example that Lampa uses in the article is the events following September 11th, 2001. Even after the mainstream media stopped talking about the events, bloggers continued to offer their first-hand experiences. This allowed US citizens to form their own opinions and keep the news flowing. Diary bloggers also have a large role in the blogosphere. While their audiences are generally very small, it allows them to express their thoughts to others. Sometimes it may only be that they had a bad day. Other times it may be an epiphany that occurred to them and some insight into the world. These blogs provide readers with a way to see how others are faring. This could help someone realize that they are not the only ones going through hardships and seek additional help.
Key Terms and Main Ideas:
- Blog: A form or publishing comprised of short, distinct chunks of information, arranged in reverse chronological order.
- Blogging Iceberg: The tendency to think of blogs as a source for media discussion and linking, when they only represent about 10% of the blogs in use.
- Blogosphere: The wide and varied use of blogging to communicate with others.
- Filtering: The picking and choosing of blogs or posts based on their content.
- Imagined Community: The sense of a community, bound together, through the use of blogging for the purpose of instant publication.
Making Connections: In the article “Into the Blogosphere” by Graham Lampa, he talks about some research that was conducted by Benedict Anderson, a political scientist. Anderson authored a book in 1983 called Imagined Communities (wiki link), that explained the concept of nationalism leading to the creation of nations or, as Anderson refers to them, imagined communities. Anderson states that nations are socially constructed, not ruled be right of birth or divine right. These ideas began to form during the industrial revolution, where rigid caste systems began to fall and new forms of government began to rise. These communities are imagined because most individuals will never meet, speak to, or hear of each other. They are, however, connected through common morals, and values. These values and morals define our ways of life, and though we think of them as true concrete objects, they are still intangible ideals. This is concept is known as reification, and studied by sociologists.
Cranial Notations 