Digital Media @ 8:00 am!: Kim MacPhail: Final Project, Blogs

Kim MacPhail

Digital Media

March 23, 2014

Blogs: Power of the Blogosphere

When we here the word "blog", we used to always immediately think “personal diary”. Now, blogs have taken the diary theme and molded it into this domain of opportunity within the media. Blogs are now a fundamental part of the online web meaning much more than just a place where people write about their lives. It is a world of amateur journalism and partisanship that has embraced thousands of new forms in both content and context. Bloggers have turned a simple act of writing into foundations for media powerhouses, but the essential question of “if anyone can take text and images and upload them to a blog, is this news?” still remains. Even with some of its negative implications on professional journalism, blogs are positive outlets of creativity that have changed the world of journalism by transforming amateur writers into influential forces within the 21^st century media culture.

This photo shows some of the most famous bloggers including Michael Arrington, Jenna Marbles, Arianna Huffington, and Matt Drudge. http://www.yalibrariantales.com/2010/12/five-challenge-5-great-ya-bloggers.html

Jorn Barger, creator of Robot Wisdom, coined the term "weblog" and later as web tools advanced and became more user friendly, blogging became a huge part of society. The first blogs started as personal diaries and soon grew into sources for topics ranging from fashion to politics. In 1994, Justin Hall of Swarthmore College created one of the first blogs Link.net. After Link.net, more and more weblogs emerged and their popularity increased allowing for major blogging search engines such as WordPress and Technorati were created. By the mid 2000s, blogs hit the mainstream. “In January 2005, a study was released saying that 32 million Americans read blogs” (WordPress). Today in 2014, there are over 150 million blogs each reaching anyone with access to the vast world of the Web (Blogger).

This is a photo of Jorn Barger who coined the term weblog and supports the stereotype of the unpaid yet influencial blogger. http://blogandstream.com/about-us/

The broadness of content in blogs is the reason for their vast influence throughout the United States. Personal, fashion, technology, political and travel blogs are only just topics that then subcategorized again and again. Today, Tumblr itself has 177.5 Million blogs with over 80.7 Billion posts each with a different category and subject. This wide range of topics explores different views on subjects creating new sources for information. Major fashion bloggers influence the way readers dress just as political blogs sway readers from one political view to another. In addition to genre blogs categories, blogs also differ in the way they are delivered. Microblogging, corporate blogging, media type blogs such as Vlogs (video blogs) are different forms that blogs can come in. Twitter is the most famous and influential example of microblogging due to its popularity and accessibility to a diverse audience. Companies, newspapers, universities, and organizations have all turned to blogging and microblogging to aid their business ultimately showing how blogs have major power in society.

This photo shows the major blogging sites surrounding the globe symbolizing their great impact in the world http://fettss.arc.nasa.gov/collection/details/earth-globe-oceania/

With blogging becoming so popular online, more and more people turn to them as sources of information. Matt Drudge mixes conservative politics news, and gossip in the infamous Drudge Report, a one-person news blog. Because there were no editors Drudge published a piece on Bill Clinton’s affair with the White House intern while Newsweek, the most popular professional newspaper outlet at the time, still had its editors fact checking. Drudge challenged neutral conventional journalism through his scooping. "The informal, first-person tone of blogs led to discussions among journalists about the objective ideal in news reporting” (Media in Society 157). Online journalism is negative in that it creates an ethical vertigo with the value in news and credibility, confusion of what a journalist is, pressure to lower ethical standards, and “the rise in journalism assertion: unsubstantiated opinion and rumor which harms journalistic credibility” (Kendyl Salcito).

This the creator of the Drudge Report, Matt Drudge on a Newsweek logo showing the two rival sources for news. http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2012/12/matt_drudge_pushes_outrage_button_with_nword_headline.html

Even with its negative implications on professional journalism, blogs remain positive towards journalism because of their ability to connect with readers. Many journalists have even been inspired by blogs, creating their own to show other sides of journalism that readers don’t see in newspapers. Readers get different viewpoints through blogs. Political Blogs give readers both opinions and facts about current politicians in the hopes of persuading either away or towards certain candidates, but ultimately making readers think more critically about them which results in more educated voting decisions. Jeff Jarvis even went so far as to recommend revealing “your religion if you’re covering the abortion debate? Or come clean if you’re covering the auto industry and gave money to the National Audubon Society?” (Media in Society 157). Giving a point of view through blogs makes the reader connect and relate to the author/blogger and ultimately the ability to comment, like, or use the blog posts as references. It is in our nature as humans to want to connect and relate to others and blogs, having a vast range of topics and opinions, allow there to be a greater connections between the readers and writers.

This Photo shows an ordinary person using their laptop and blogging as a way to be powerful. http://www.tots100.co.uk/2013/04/22/the-secret-blogger-why-i-write-sponsored-posts/

Some major forces in the professional blogging world are TechCrunch or the Huffington Post. TechCrunch, created by Michael Arrington, is one of the most influencial blogs in the technology and business world. Thousands of start-up businesses refer to Arrington’s blog which now has spawned other mini empires of websites and conferences, is the largest technology focused blog in the business. Like Michael Arrington, Arianna Huffington received the title as one of the most influential people in the United States in Forbes Magazine due to her blog known as the Huffington Post. The Huffington Post connected blogging and professional journalism when socialite Arianna used her media connections and money showing that the “same rules could apply to the old medium” (The Observer). Before Huffington, large corporations ignored the web and now, post Huffington, companies exploit this new influential marketplace. With Arrington taking advantage of his background in entrepreneurship and technology and Huffington’s journalistic and socialite influence, they were able to create some of the most viewed and referenced websites in the United States.

This is a satirical portrayal of Michael Arrington who is the creator of the blog TechCrunch and one of the most influential men in the U.S. http://greatpreneurs.com/30-people-a-young-entrepreneur-must-follow/

In addition to factual based blogs, many other major bloggers are entertainment based and receive a more negative response when it comes to their influence such as Jenna Marbles or Perez Hilton. Both bloggers are entertainment based and used their creativity to form Vlogs and blogs about everyday life and entertainment. With millions of followers, Perez and Marbles are just as influential as the magazines and newspapers that we walk by on the street, but are web-based.Yes, they sometimes don’t have the best messages to society but that doesn’t mean they aren’t powerful figures who have used their creativity to their advantage. As ordinary people on their laptops, they used the “power of weblogs to transform both writers and readers from “audience” to “public” and from “consumer” to “creator” (Rebecca Blood). Blogs are easy, cheap, and fast publishing tools accessible by all and by taking advantage of these tools, Perez Hilton and Jenna Marbles became notorious figures in 21^st century United States news circles.

This photo shows Jenna Marbles head ontop of a woman on the cover of most powerful women issue of Fortune Magazine http://thestudentreview.co.uk/2012/09/tsr-on-tech-your-weekly-news-summary-42/

Whether it is Michael Arrington or Perez Hilton, bloggers have used the blogosphere to their advantage influencing the millions of viewers that read TechCrunch or PerezHilton. Blogs have no restrictions when it comes to writing or creating allowing for opinions to flourish and the distance between writer and reader shortened. Political blogs can change the amount of votes each candidate gets in the next presidential election and fashion blogs can change the cultural style that currently exists in a country. The biggest bloggers are just ordinary people sitting in their homes on their laptops. Overall, bloggers have an enormous amount of power in the 21^st century United States and with technological advances increasing, the more bloggers and influence the blogosphere will have.