thoughts on blogging part 2

A blog is an online space where entries are created and stored in a database making each entry accessible and linkable. The entries are easy to add and to edit and usually come with some sort of system where people can comment leading to feedback and continuing conversations about topics.

One of the main differences for me between blogs and paper journals are that blogs exist in a relationship, to other blogs, the internet, and to their audience. They are part of the hybrid between technology and our culture. In a paper journal writers reflect on their experience often with the intent of reading it later or passing it on a personal level to other people. There is still an awareness of audience in the filtering of material that is included when writing but paper journals have a sense of permanency and factuality. When somebody writes on paper, privately, it means that the audience can't refute, or dialogue with it directly.

Online blogs add an immediacy and directness to the interaction with the audience and the writer becomes influenced by the way that other people do, or don't, react to their musings. The engagement in a blog is usually dialogical and it takes a conscious act to block other people's interaction with blog writings.

When people write about their interests or their daily lives they are bringing their real experience into the webspace to share with their readers, both regular and passerbys. The blogs exist within the day to day life of the writers.

Blogs exist in relationship. They link to other blogs, to readers, to websites that are regularly accessed, and to new and interesting things. The new material added is influenced by the reactions of other people and the material discovered around the web. Relationships develop between the writer and the audience.

Blogs are not simply documents on the web, they are part of the technoculture of the virtual community. While they are not the only way that people interact with each other using these technologies, they form a major tool for developing relationships and act as an interface for display within the virtual space. They are an extension of the writer in the sense that they provide a presence for performance of self. The blog acts as a space where people can express themselves and gain recognition for their identity. Academic blogs reflect on articles or issues that are being discussed in their field, fandom blogs reflect on the canon, fanfiction, fanart, what other people think and about the nature of fandom and personal blogs reflect on the day-to-day life of the writer. The aspects of identity that the individual is seeking recognition for is performed through the discourse of the blog.

Both blogs and paper journals are tools for exploring identity although blogs exist in relationship and are a tool for performing and receiving recognition of identity. Paper journals, on the other hand, are a personal private tool for exploring self.