Show Me Your Context, Baby: My Love Affair with Blogs is Kate Baggott’s trAce award piece on blogging positioning blogging against literature and discussing its merits as its own medium. The piece is thought-provoking, but the image is outright eerie.
“In lieu of charisma, bloggers possess a magnetism that would repel in any other medium. Bloggers are like the smart and difficult students who interrupted every lesson with sarcastic commentary and passed their exams with audacity and contempt for their schools, their subjects, their teachers and the exams themselves. They do not write for audiences or according to deadline. They comment because they have something to say.”
[FYI: it’s a New Media style piece and assumes some knowledge of theorists like McLuhan and Postman.]
Truer words have rarely been spoken but what of bloggers paid to,en masse, skew towards one point of view? Should a blogger state that they receive compensation by a sponsor,like a tv/radio commercial?(NOT insulting or alluding to anyone here,just a forecast/vision of the future,relax.)
Maybe not yet but when if it does,and 1000’s popular bloggers are “paid” by the FOX news or Enron , will this be a more effective tool to change one’s mind on a given subject?Imagine a popular blogger stating that a certain policy isn’t too bad or commending a viewpoint slightly.Will bloggers become “hired guns” by corporate forces? I hope my vision of the future is wrong…
Hey… I’m a music major in Potsdam, NY. I’ve been listening to Ani for 4 years and have never seen her live. Her music is much of the life guiding my aspirations as a musician and person. I would like to thank you for keeping your lyrics page looking so good and up to date. When ever I get a new mp3 or cd I can always go to your page and the lyrics are there. Again… thanks.
~Nick DelVillano
P.S. – I think I’m going to try to see her on November 19th in NYC. Kind of a self-delivered birthday present.
When you said, “eerie”, you mean the picture or the attitudes reflected in the “award-winning” piece, danah.
“Truer words”…? I couldn’t find but 2 or 3…;-D
Rarely…?? I’m sorry, but you must mostly read blogs.
“They do not write for audiences or according to deadline. They comment because they have something to say.”
Oh come on. People with things to say are in every form of media, and the vast majority of bloggers are worthless. Love fests over new mediums are so facile, give me good old fashioned quality any day, whatever the conduit.
“I hope my vision of the future is wrong…”
It is hopelessly wrong.
That’d be the present. Both dollars and “social capital” are exchanged, every day, which is what DOES fund the University of Blogaria.
I’m more concerned about the dollars flowing SO easily and so un-detectedly.
danah, I forgot to put a question mark after my first sentence, in post above. I question whether your research is biased, or whether you are just not seeing what I saw in this “pseudo-journalism”.
And this was the best? I’d fear what the worst was.