Blog post #1

In this article they open by saying “Blogging is sometimes viewed as a new, grassroots form of journalism and a way to shape democracy outside the mass media and conventional party politics… But the vast majority of blogs are written by ordinary people for much smaller audiences.” There are many reasons why a person starts a blog, but most of them are driven to do so by interests, and a need for communication and expression. To discover the motivations behind blog use they conducted interviews with blogers around Stanford University to learn about their habbits, thoughts and use of other communications in terms and related to their blog use. After analyzing the interviews they found that there was a wide range of content written about in each blog, branching outside their own professions and education to all topics of interest. They also discovered some bloggers used it as an outlet for their emotional needs in a therapeutic way. They found in most of the blogs that the writers maintained their personal code of ethics regarding what they wrote or included, being sure keep their audience in mind so not to insult them or push them away due to their views and content. Many of the motivations behind blog posts were listed as: documenting one’s life, providing commentary and opinions; expressing deeply felt emotions; articulating ideas through writing; and forming and maintaining community forums, along with documenting their lives. The article then goes into the topic of asking why do they use blogs vs. email or a personal webpage? Many blogs listed the benefits of blog use as it involving less overhead, and the broadcast nature of the writing style. “they put out information, and no one need respond unless they wished to. Blogs are not intrusive. No one is “forced to pay attention”.. Reading is voluntary, when convenient”. Many blogers also viewed web pages as negative due to their formatting, and their tendency to seem “static”. There are some negative connotations associated with blog use like the writers appearing narcissistic, ranting, or thinking others find them so interesting that they must document their lives. However, most favor blogs for their freedom of topic choice and ability to shift “between the personal and the profound”. My opinion of this article was that it’s group of informants provided a very diverse, acruate, and well-rounded insight of the “blogisphere”. I didn’t really have any opinions on blogs (for or against) before reading this article. However, after reading and taking in all the findings of the study, I was introduced to some positive and negative thoughts on blogs I had previously not considered. I found it quite interesting the opinions on bloggers being narcissistic and I would have never understood that point if I hadn’t had to start my own blog. In this process I too, have thought: “Who cares about what I write?”.