Blogging / Jill Walker Rettberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rettberg, Jill Walker.

Series:

Digital media and society series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Blogs--Social aspects.

Blogs.

Online social networks.

Social aspects.

Physical Description:

viii, 176 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2008.

Summary:

Blogging has profoundly influenced not only the nature of the Internet today, but also the nature of modern communication, despite being a genre invented less than a decade ago. This book-length study of a now everyday phenomenon provides a close look at blogging while placing it in a historical, theoretical and contemporary context.

Scholars, students and bloggers with find a lively survey of blogging that contextualizes blogs in terms of critical theory and the history of digital media. Authored by a scholar-blogger, the book is packed with examples that show how blogging and related genres are changing media and communication. It gives definitions and explains how blogs work, shows how blogs relate to the historical development of publishing and communication and looks at the ways blogs structure social networks and at how social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook incorporate blogging in their design. Specific kinds of blogs discussed include political blogs, citizen journalism, confessional blogs and commercial blogs.

Contents:

1 What is a Blog? 4

How to Blog 5

Three Blogs 9

Defining Blogs 17

A Brief History of Weblogs 22

2 From Bards to Blogs 31

Orality and Literacy 32

The Introduction of Print 36

Print, Blogging and Reading 39

Printed Precedents of Blogs 40

The Late Age of Print 42

A Modern Public Sphere? 46

Hypertext and Computer Lib 48

Technological Determinism or Cultural Shaping of Technology? 52

3 Blogs, Communities and Networks 57

Social Network Theory 59

Distributed Conversations 61

Technology for Distributed Communities 64

Other Social Networks 68

Publicly Articulated Relationships 75

Colliding Networks 77

Emerging Social Networks 80

4 Citizen Journalists? 84

Bloggers' Perception of Themselves 87

When it Matters Whether a Blogger is a Journalist 89

Objectivity, Authority and Credibility 91

First-hand Reports: Blogging from a War Zone 95

First-hand Reports: Chance Witnesses 98

Bloggers as Independent Journalists and Opinionists 101

Gatewatching 103

Symbiosis 108

5 Blogs as Narratives 111

Fragmented Narratives 111

Goal-oriented Narratives 113

Ongoing Narratives 115

Blogs as Self- exploration 120

Fictions or Hoaxes? Kaycee Nicole and lonelygirl15 121

6 Blogging Brands 127

The Human Voic 128

Advertisements on Blogs 131

Micropatronage 135

Sponsored Posts and Pay-to-Post 137

Corporate Blogs 141

Engaging Bloggers 147

Corporate Blogging Gone Wrong 150

7 The Future of Blogging 155

Implicit Participation 156

Perils of Personalized Media 157.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-172) and index.

ISBN:

0745641334

9780745641331

0745641342

9780745641348

OCLC:

228275786