View
215
Download
0
Category
Tags:
Preview:
Citation preview
The Past, Present and Future of Weblogs
Susan C. Herring
School of Library and Information ScienceIndiana University, Bloomington
Definition
Weblog — a frequently modified web page in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence
Related phenomena
Online journal host sites (e.g., LiveJournal.com, DiaryLand.com)
“Community weblogs” (e.g., Slashdot.com, Metafilter.com)
Size
1,454,524 weblogs indexed by the NITLE Weblog Census as of 10/31/03
959,985 (66%) estimated active Including online journal sites brings
the estimated total to 4.12 million (Perseus, October 2003), of which 34% are active
The “Standard View”
Weblogs are value-added filters of external (typically, Web) content; radically new; intellectually and socially transformative Mass media (e.g., Glaser 2002; Lasica 2001) Blog authors (e.g., D. Winer, R. Blood) Reproduced in assumptions of scholarly
studies (e.g., Krishnamurty 2002; Park 2003)
Standard history
Earliest precursor - “what’s new” pages by Tim Berners-Lee (1993)
1st modern weblog - Dave Winer’s Scripting News (1996)
Jorn Barger coins the term ‘weblog’ (1997) Peter Merholz re-analyzes it as ‘we-blog’
(1998); later shortened to ‘blog’ Blogger software (1999) makes blogging
accessible Blogs attract media attention after 9/11
Present-day situation
Pre-filtered Web content E.g., Robot Wisdom
Political commentary E.g., InstaPundit
Knowledge management E.g., Dave Winer at Harvard’s Berkman
Center Engaging “voices”
E.g., Megnut Interlinked community (the “Blogosphere”)
Future projections
Democratizing/socially transformative (Gillmore - “every employee should have a public weblog”)
Politically influential (Rosen - “information flows from the public to the press”)
Knowledge creating (Burg – “emergent intelligence”)
Problems with the Standard View
Ahistorical: Shallow time depth Partial: Excludes many contemporary
blog phenomena Misleading: Misrepresents the nature
of weblogs, with implications for future trajectory
Specifically…
Limits consideration of historical antecedents to the Web
Overlooks personal journal blogs; privileges blogs created by an educated, adult, male elite
Uncritically represents blogging as intellectual, influential in the public sphere
Research study
Blog Research on Genre project (BROG) Sabrina Bonus, Susan Herring, Lois Scheidt,
Elijah Wright
Goal: to characterize empirically the “average blog”
A snapshot of the present as a benchmark for future comparison
Data sample
“Core” blogs (excl. LiveJournal, DiaryLand) Minimum 2 entries
Random sampling from blo.gs site Tracking 866,394 blogs as of 10/31/03 Sources: antville.org, blogger.com,
pitas.com,weblogs.com Excluded non-English blogs; blogs with no text in
first entry; blog software used for non-blog purpose; blog not updated within two weeks
203 blogs collected and coded March-May 2003
Methodology
Web content analysis (Bates & Lu, 1997; cf. Bauer, 2000)
Genre characteristics (Chandler, 1998; Dillon & Gushrowski, 2000; cf. Yates & Orlikowsky, 1992) Producer Purpose Structure
Coded 44 features in each blog; quantified results
Hypotheses
Blog content tends to be external to the author (news; strange-but-true phenomena; technical/scholarly information, etc.)
Blog authors are typically well-educated adult males
Blogs are interactive, attracting multiple comments from readers
Blogs are heavily interlinked
Findings: Blog content
Type Frequency Percentage
Personal journal 140 70.4
Filter 25 12.6
K-log 6 3.0
Mixed 19 9.5
Other 9 4.5
199 100
Blog entry (Lazy Gnome)
Friday, 13th June 2003 3.08pm - trigger happy hippy with a Canon AE-1 If I go away, I take my camera. Standard practice.So, for your viewing displeasure, there are 4 new gallerys to view:
watery timesmy 1st b+w shootSwanage area + 1sea and air
First two are from my latest trip to Edinburgh to see my little sweetie. The second two were taken from my 4 day trip to the south coast with my parents in their campervan (I had a 4 man tent all to myself!).
Seeing as the last 'family holiday' I can remember was about 8 years ago, it was a real treat for me.
Comment ?
Findings: Blog authors
Characteristic Frequency Percentage
One author 196 90.8
Male 110 54.2
Adult (20 years or older) 115 59.6
Student 73 57.5
Located in USA 104 69.8
Blog authors (cont.) Blog content varies according to gender of blog
author Personal journals & other: 60% Female, 40% Male Filters, k-logs & mixed: 15% Female, 85% Male
Blog content varies according to age of blog author Personal journals & other: 60% Teen, 40% Adult Filters, k-logs & mixed: 5% Teen, 95% Adult
Many adult blog authors appear to be in their early 20’s
The second most frequent occupation is ‘unemployed’
Findings: Comments
Percent of blogs allowing comments: 43% Related to default settings in blogging software
Number of comments per newest entry:mean .3mode 0range 0-6
Number of comments per oldest entry:mean .3mode 0range 0-7
Findings: Links
Percent of blogs containing external links (excluding badges): 69.5
Number of links per newest entry:mean .65mode 0range 0-11
Percent of newest entries that link to a news source: 8.2
Percent of newest entries that link to another blog: 6.7
Summary of findings
Blog content is mostly personal (and often intimate)
Blog authors are roughly equally split between male and female, adult and teen Adult males create more filters and k-logs Females and teens create more personal
journals Most blog entries receive no comments Most blog entries contain no links
Problem for historical account
The typical modern blog is unlikely to have evolved from lists of links on the Web
Alternative historical account
Blogs developed out of previous Web genres (e.g., online journal, personal home page, hotlist)
Blog genres have antecedents in previous offline genres (e.g., diaries, newsletters, editorials)
The blog can be seen as part of a continuous evolution of the journal format since the 17th century
Online journals
Since 1995 Co-exist with blogs Like personal journal blogs:
More females than males Personal content Updated daily or nearly daily Reverse chronological sequence Some links Switch to blog software
Hand-written diaries Since 14th c. in England ‘Diary’ > Latin dies ‘days’ Multiple uses
“We have our state diurnals, relating to national affairs. Tradesmen keep their shop books. Merchants their account books. Lawyers have their books of pre[c]edents. Physitians have their experiments. Some wary husbands have kept a diary of daily disbursements. Travellers a Journall of all that they have seen and hath befallen them in their way.”
(John Beadle)
Growth in popularity in 17th c. Samuel Pepys’ diary (1659-1669)
Subsequent evolution
Blog uses expand Journal type overtakes filter type Shift from link to personal focus
Justin Hall, one of the pioneers of the online journal:
“When I first discovered the web I was very excited by the tremendous amounts of information. I surfed the web far and wide in them early days, and I kept a log, of sorts. … Then, I started posting stories about my life; context for the rest of the content. That part of my site grew to be the most involving and perhaps engaging.”
Problem for future predictions
The typical weblog is unlikely to be intellectually and socially transformative
Alternative future perspective Increasing mundane use
AOL (35.6 million subscribers) Increasing contentiousness
The “blogs of war” (Cavanaugh, 2002) Increasing commercialization
Ads on free software Fewer features on free sites Paid blog hosting services Business blogs Astro-turfing and spamming
Increasing non-blog use of blog software
The blog as hybrid
Multiple functional antecedents Mixed content within a single blog Shares features of online and offline
genres Intermediate between standard Web
documents and interactive computer-mediated communication (CMC)
Binary feature comparison of blogs with written and computer-mediated genres
Genre Series of msgs
Subject-ive view
External content
Public aud.
Single theme
Readers comm’nt
Multi-media
CMC # of + features
Hand-written diary
+ + – – – – – – 2
Newspaper editorial
+ + + + + + (in n’paper)
– – 5
Project journal + – + – + – (-) – 3
Travelogue + +? + +/– (–) – + – 5?
Post-it notes (–) – +/– (–) –? +? (in same
medium)
– – 2?
Personal letter +/– + – – – + (in same
medium)
(-) – 3
Personal home page
– + – + – – (not usually)
+ + 4
Usenet newsgroup
+ + +/– + (+) + – + 7
Journal blog + + – + – +/- + + 6
Filter blog + + + + +/– + + + 8
K-log + (-) + +/ – (+) + + + 7
Weblogs on a continuum between standard Web pages and CMC
Standard Web Weblogs AsynchronousPages Online Community CMC
Journals Blogs
rarely updated frequently updated constantly updatedasymmetrical broadcast asymmetrical exchange symmetrical exchangemultimedia limited multimedia text-based
Conclusion
Blogs featured in contemporary public discourses about blogging are the exception, rather than the rule
Important to look at “average” blogs as well as interesting/unusual ones Socio-political, social-psychological, and
technical implications
Socio-historical analysis constitutes a useful antidote to the ahistoricity of discourse about blogs and the Internet in general
Conclusion (cont.)
Blogs may ultimately prove transformative, but not in favoring a specific content, audience, or quality
Rather, they create new affordances that will be open to a variety of uses (cf. email)
Recommended