The corporate blog as an emerging genre of computer ... - Oapen

A classification of blogs following Herring 33
Figure 2.6: Blog entries in Google Reader
table that the contextual information provided allows the blogger to use deictic
expressions in his writing in the same fashion they are used in face-to-face conversation,
since the same situational data is available to the reader (see section
2.10).
Thus, it can be argued that the sequential packaging of information, as well
as its prototypical function as a personal publishing tool used by private individuals,
are the blog’s constitutive attributes, more so than specific content, user
community or medial channel. The fact that video blogs (figure 2.8) are referred
to as blogs while presenting little or no textual information supports this: what
is shared with conventional blogs is their status as a personal publishing tool
and their serial output. Blogs are conceptualized as a communicative extension
of the self into the Internet by different medial means.
The sequential, paradigmatic segmentation of information found in a blog
mirrors the human perception of time as a sequence of events. While blogs
can also be browsed in other ways, their most fundamental organizing principle
is time. The information presented to the reader thus partially imitates the
setting of spoken conversation: he can identify the speaker and the time of
speaking (i.e. publication time), but there is a lack of synchronicity and no
opportunity for conversational turns. Meanwhile, the blogger must contend with
variable, opaque and passive participation (he cannot identify his communicative
partner), but as a result of the audience’s passivity is not forced to cede the floor
and is under no restraints in terms of length and relevance of his contribution.
2.2.2 Situation factors
Herring’s schema integrates eight situation factors to describe the non-technical
parameters that shape an STF. Table 2.2 assesses these factors separately for
blogs in general and for corporate blogs, since most of the facets listed only