The two readings for Week 2 of Networked Media consisted of Jill Walker Rettberg’s “Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series” as well as “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning” by Adrian Miles.
From the readings I discovered the history of where the term ‘Blog’ came from. Originating in 1997, the words comes from the words ‘WEB’ and ‘LOG’ and described as a web site in which the posts are arranged and read in chronological order. Blogs are also defined as a medium rather than a genre, this categorises them as a form of media.
In Rettberg’s work, the founder of blogging site “Blogger”, Evan Williams, named the three characteristics that define good blogging, these are the “frequency, brevity and personality”. This supports the points raised in Miles’s work that the use of blogs also raises questions about an individuals online personality.
Blogging has influenced new media immensely in the sense that audiences have become active participants in creating media as well as consuming it. In the beginning of “Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series” Rettberg suggests that blogging is a “cummulative” process. By that she means that you have some previous knowledge of who the blogger is, their history and their style of writing and publishing. Bloggers also have full creative control over how the blog looks aesthetically as well as the content. Rettberg mentions that authors of Newspapers would write a piece, it would be sent back to the editor who may change aspects of it and perhaps with a team of designers, also decide the layout of the page. Due to the “distributed and densely inter-connected nature” (Miles 2006) of the Internet, bloggers have more authority over their published works and the platform on which they’re hosted.
This authority and control over media from consumers has had a large, historical impact on the media industry. Now due to Social Media, a persons opinions and thoughts can be shared incredibly easily and you don’t need to work for a large publishing corporation to have your work read, just an internet connection and a blog page.