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which enable a blog to transform from a ‗mere‘ written text into a multimodal mobile media
object (4MO). 143 As a 4MO, a blog features several elements that define it as such: convergence of
text, sound and image and video, the commenting feature, blog following, trackbacking, etc. 4MO
features in blogs also facilitate the circulation or mobility of content among its readers, i.e. in the
community. Importantly, as a 4MO, blogging is a means of promulgating content and
consequentially of creating a community, emerging via more or less active partaking in the
discussions and blog inter-linking.
Considering the fact that memory is often a latent or formal component of blogging, it may prove
useful first to look at the technological predispositions enabling the practice of blogging and with
it the practices of creating, maintaining, co-creating and distributing memory. Typically, blogs are
very much structured like a diary: entries are marked by the date, day and time of posting and
usually ordered chronologically with the most recent one on top, which provides a temporal
structure and indeed a genealogy of the blog and the history of the writer‘s engagement in the
endeavour. Often, the posts are also accessible via categorising in the archive section, searchable
either by topic or time of posting. Tagging is frequently employed to provide a wider selection of
search criteria that may lead to finding a topic of interest. This temporal structure inherent in
blogging provides for a formal or ‗technical memory,‘ as it gives the visitor an overview of blog‘s
activities: duration of blog operation, coherence of posting, number of visitors, engagement of
visitors in discussions, relationship between various connected/related blogs, etc. 144
Among the endless variety of blogging topics where memory may be more or less explicitly
present, there is a number of blogs that deal specifically with history (and memory). Such blogs
may be managed by researchers with backgrounds in social sciences and humanities, or amateurs
143 The SOTB 2010 report states 90 % of bloggers use some kind of multimedia on their blogs, with photos leading
convincingly at 87 % and video 50 %; the use of both audio (music or spoken) and text only ranges at about 10 % of
multimedia used in blogs. See Jon Sobel, ―HOW: Technology, Traffic and Revenue – Day 3,‖ SOTB 2010,
http://technorati.com/blogging/article/how-technology-traffic-and-revenue-day/, accessed 8 August 2011.
144 A rather intriguing case in topic specific blogging and memory is for instance found in food and travel blogging. In
Jaden Hair‘s Steamy Kitchen for instance (the blog is integrated into the main Steamy Kitchen website) the recipe
entries are not only recipes but also very personal narratives related to food and to author‘s private life. Thus with the
recipe for roasted tomato soup the visitor can find out about author‘s life in San Francisco. Another case in this vein is
the blog of Joy the Baker. Here the author regularly posts recipes and embellishes the entries with very
personal/intimate, easy-going, funny frequently food-related vignettes giving insight into the author‘s life: ―This blog
is proof that I‘m navigating my way through the world. You‘ll get a little bit about life, and a healthy heap of love,
cookies, cakes and creams. Together we‘ll figure out how they all come together to create one incredibly sweet life.‖
Travel blogs will give a more or less detailed account of a person‘s travelling experience by employing textual
narrative interspersed with photos and occasionally videos, depicting a particular place in a particular time. Not only
that, as is the case in many narrativisations of personal (past) experiences such ‗photo-writing‘ also reveals much
about the writer‘s attitude to the world, other people and places. Via DME specific blogging characteristics the
interaction thus enabled facilitates establishment of a community which through sharing their travel experiences
‗connects‘ between themselves and to the world. Their memories are thus enacted at the moment of connection which
then becomes the moment of memory, regardless of the exact where- or when-abouts of the interactors.
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