Bloggers

I would like to apologize in advance, I have been very sick all weekend and this might not be up to my usual writing standards haha.

The idea of blogs has not always been around in our world. The growth of the internet in recent years has provided many new mediums for writers to utilize.  “The word blog is a contraction of the words ‘web’ and ‘log’”(Rettberg 30). Originally, they were not called blogs, but weblogs, as they are on the internet. The Oxford English Dictionary defined ‘weblog’ as “A frequently updated website consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc. typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary” (Rettberg 34). Wikipedias first definition of blog is from September 18^th 2012, stating “A discussion or informational site that is published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries typically displayed in reverse chronological order” (Rettberg 32).

Blogs have can various topics, and can also be either professional or personal. It is up to the blogger. “Blogs are far more diverse in their subject matter than either comedies or sonnets” (Rettberg 31). Blogs today are more diverse than ever, and are used for many different things. Bloggers use their sites to get their opinions and points of view out into the world. This has become a new way for the publishers to personally reach out to their readers.

Rettberg discusses that there is a thin line between a blog being a medium or a genre. “Scholars have suggested that, rather than looking at the internet as a single medium, it makes more sense to consider different authoring software as providing different media” (Rettberg 32). Rettberg then states that yes, a blog is a medium while what you write on the blog is a genre and sub genre. I agree with that and believe that the genres on these blogs show who the author is. If a comic wants to get their jokes out to their audiences, they may use a blog to write and share their ideas. The medium is the blog, but the genre is comedy.

Journalist can use blogs to get their ideas out into the public when they have no other options. My sister, for example, is a comedian and journalist. She has a blog in which she has continuously written on for 6 years. During that time, she has had a few different journalist jobs, New York Times or Buzzfeed, but her personal writing and ideas stay on the blog for her fans and audience. Through her blog, she found a way to reach the audience she wanted, in a medium that was accessible to her. “In twentieth-century democratic societies, people wishing to have their words and ideas published or broadcast had to contend with editorial policies that were generally based on ideology or on what advertisers support or the public buy” (Rettberg 90). With this being the case, many stories were not published because they did not, at the time, seem newsworthy. In today’s society, anything can be published on a blog. This idea of personal blogs changed the way the internet was used.

In the Miller and Shepard article, they state that bloggers were initially unaware of the audience they could reach with these blogs. The freedom to have a space where writers can express their ideas on their own merits is an incredible attribution to what blogs have become today. Blogs can be used for all different genres and can convey whatever message the author would like. They have changed the way writers and journalist publish their stories.

Miller, Carolyn R. and Dawn Shepherd. “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog.” Into the Blogosphere [Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs]. North Carolina State University. Web. 14 September 2014. 

Rettburg, Jill Walker. Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series. Cambirdge, 2014. Print.