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Issues of definition 13 2005, p. 142). While this seems a simple and clear explanation at first sight, it is of merit to turn to Wikipedia, in many ways the definite source of public wisdom on topics related to the Internet, 3 for a second, longer definition: A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketches (sketchblog), videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting), which are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging, one which consists of blogs with very short posts. [..] With the advent of video blogging, the word blog has taken on an even looser meaning — that of any bit of media wherein the subject expresses his opinion or simply talks about something. (Wikipedia, 2008, no pagination) 4 The description in Wikipedia has been rewritten countless times, as new uses of blogs have sprung up and blog technology has become increasingly flexible. The encyclopedia’s editors have visibly struggled with the question of whether to define blogs primarily in terms of technology (“a web site”), structure (“entries”, “reverse-chronological order”), authorship (“usually maintained by an individual”), content (“descriptions of events”, “commentary or news on a particular subject”, “opinion”), interactivity (“the ability for readers to leave comments”) or genre (“personal diary”) and have opted for an amalgam of all of these aspects. Revisions to the entry have shifted focus from one constitutive feature to another and the page has gained significantly in length since its inception on 1 November 2001, when the definition simply read: “[a] web log (also known as a blog[..]) is a website that tracks headlines and articles from other websites[..] [t]hey are frequently maintained by volunteers and are typically devoted to a specific audience or topic.” 5 The terminological difficulties have multiple origins, among them technological innovation, such as the proliferation of online video, and cultural innovation, such as the adoption of blogging by increasingly diverse communities of users for 3 While Wikipedia’s authority varies from one subject are to the next, descriptions of technical topics are generally quite thorough. In the case of blogs, I am less interested in Wikipedia as an authoritative source than in how the article reflects problems of conceptualizing blogs encountered by the article’s authors. 4 See the page history to trace the evolution of the text. Note that Wikipedia entries are updated and rewritten frequently and the entry on blogs is no exception. 5 I have chosen to omit a detailed recapitulation of blog history in this thesis, both because much has already been written on the topic and because the functions and contexts of blog use have changed significantly since web logs first appeared on the scene. For a thorough and canonical description of the evolution of blogs, see Blood (2000).
14 Introduction an increasingly wide array of purposes. As with other practices that were initially the domain of private individuals, blogging is gradually being integrated into professional and institutional contexts 6 . Just as the 20th century saw the increasing professionalization and commercialization of journalism, blogging is rapidly progressing from a novel, even subversive practice to something quite mainstream. Another significant problem of definition is the mutable nature of blogs. The types of website that refer to themselves as blogs are generally maintained and updated with a specialized publishing tool (blog publishing software) which is either installed by the user or available for immediate use as part of a web-based blogging service (e.g. Blogger, Wordpress, LiveJournal). The choice in software conditions certain structural aspects of blogs such as serial publishing (posting one blog post entry after the other), but aims to give the user as much flexibility as possible. As a result of increasing technological flexibility and a diversification of user communities it has naturally become increasingly difficult to define what a blog is in nontechnical terms. To use a comparison: the term book is generally understood to refer to a set of relatively unchangeable physical features (made of paper, printed, has a cover and pages). When a qualification regarding the purpose, content or usage community of a book is made, it can be described with another, more specialized term (sacred text, legal code, novel). The same is only gradually happening with blogs (via the emergence of law blogs or blawgs, photologs, music blogs, etc), with the additional caveat that there are no unchangeable physical features, only a few constraints imposed by the publishing software. Figure 1.2: Live Journal As the technology becomes increasingly flexible, both in terms of what content can be published and how blogs are created and read (mobile blogging, 6 There are countless examples of blogs used in institutional contexts, such as the United Nations’ UN Dispatch, subtitled ’posts on the UN’ and reporting on the organization’s current activities.
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Page 7 and 8: 6 Contents 2.7 Chronology in data a
Page 10 and 11: List of Figures 1.1 The GM Fastlane
Page 12 and 13: Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 “Wait,
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64 Formal, technical and pragmatic
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116 Corporate blogging case studies
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124 Discussion material. The topic
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126 Discussion
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128 CBC/Corporati corpus statistics
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130 CBC/Corporati corpus statistics
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132 Bibliography Francesca Bargiela
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134 Bibliography Alexandra Georgako
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136 Bibliography Philipp Lenssen. M
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138 Bibliography Jonathan Schler, M
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Digital technology is increasingly
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