Thursday, April 9, 2009

No more Mediation

Jared Thomas
DTC-375
Dr. Farman
4/3/09
Word Count: 932

No more mediation.


Blogging is “a type of website, 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” (Wikipedia). Blogging is completely reliant on the technology of today and has redefined the hierarch of today’s published culture. In this paper I am going to discuss how blogging and technology have re-invented they way in which we are able publish unmediated content for all to consume.


How would one who wanted to get their point across in a published form go about it? Well, not too long ago you only had a couple of options. One, you could write a letter to the editor of you local paper hoping that it would make it through the editorial process and they (the paper) deemed it ok to publish. Secondly, if you had the means you could publish your own book, but then again it would go through the editorial process. Another option, though not textual, would be to place a call to a local radio station trying to get your opinion heard on air if you could get through the call screener. All of the above mentioned ways to get your opinion out into the public realm is somehow dependent upon someone else allowing it to be published or mediated. Another restriction on published thoughts was typically geographical, whether it be your city, state, or your country. This is explained by Gillian Youngs as “the public sphere“ (128). Youngs goes on to say that “the majority of people consuming such media (whether local or national) would traditionally have been located within, or associated with, the public sphere within which the media is generated. These audiences could be assumed to bring some kind of foundational historical knowledge of the specific context to the material they are accessing” (129). This means that people talk about what they know, which typically is dependent upon their geographical and societal standards.


With the invention of the World Wide Web (WWW) a new form of communication is now possible. There are no longer geographical boundaries in place; this new idea of communication is known as globalization. Globalization has no boundaries on communication; it brings the whole world to one common place, the internet. Technology has allowed people to communicate simultaneously around the world. The best thing about the WWW is that for the most part it is unmediated. This is where the success of blogging comes into the picture. After all the years of mediated information, now there is a way for anyone to post anything online. Blogging has removed the hierarchy put in place by public media, newspapers, news TV, magazines, etc. In 2006 “more than 20 million blogs being tracked around the world. They have risen in prominence as well as in numbers, with some leading blogs challenging the established order of the mainstream press”(worldpress.org).


It is safe to state that blogs are a remediated form of communication. “Individual voices, including different forms of feedback or audience engagement, are not new in themselves in the public sphere, “letter to the editor” in the traditional print media, perhaps being the archetype, but radio phone-ins, continuing to be a familiar form (and now text-ins and emailing-in)” (Youngs, 130). What Youngs is trying to say here is that the content of blogging is not necessarily new, but new technology has allowed us to create a spinoff of textual print media and move it to a digital age. You can find all sorts of what used to be private and or public information in the form of a blog, for instance; journal, political, personal, and business, etc. You name it and there is someone out there with a blog on the subject.


This brings up another interesting point about blogging, since anyone can blog people have to use their better judgment to make sure that what they are reading is valid. With the ability for anyone to publish Youngs states that “ as already indicated the location of the blog, its form and content, all contribute to how it may be regarded, and in addition to the points covered earlier, this goes well beyond distinctions between, for instance, fact and opinion. We might want to ask what kinds of facts, presented for what purpose, what kinds of opinion (professional, personal and so on) and for what purpose. Judgments about such areas are likely to contribute to the level and kind of authority, authenticity and trust granted to the blog by different audiences”(132). Basically the old saying “don’t believe everything you read” holds true here.


Blogging has given the world a new forum to publish our thoughts and opinions on anything and everything. It gives people a chance to say whatever they choose without having someone “screen” it so to speak. However with blogging allowing us to remove the hierarchy of published media, it has intern opened up the possibility for fiction to rule over the truth. If people are not educated or at least selective when reading blogs, then they run the risk of believing fiction over facts. We need to make sure that we understand the different types of blogging, the form, the content, and the context in which is relayed. Blogging has brought back the power of speech to the people and we need to encourage people to “speak” their thoughts as this was a given right that our Country was founded on and still follows today.

Works Cited
Blogs and Freedom of speech, June 6 2006,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
Youngs, Gillian. “Blogging and globalization: the blurring of the public/private spheres.” New Information Perspectives 61.2 (2009): 127.

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