Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Blogs as a Space for Local Community?

Skimming through the Online Journalism Review website (trying to catch up on all my old links as I upload them to my new home) I revistited the question of blogging as a space for discourse on local social/political/cultural topics. How effective is blogging for this? One of OJR's recent articles looks at the effectiveness of local "grassroots" journalism- which I think of as a form of blogging. Can blogs carve out a niche in this space? It's a question that is similar to the one constantly asked about blogging communities such as the Iranian blogosphere. How much do they really seep into the fabric of the local community? I don't know the answer, although I would suggest that one shouldn't compare blogging (or the internet) to other types of communal space. Clearly however it does have some (specialized?) impact on local discourse.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Christian,

Again, I find myself asking very much the same sort of questions.

To me, the nature of internet-based citizen media (with its low-cost, high volume publishing capabilities) presents an intriguing paradox: blogs/vlogs/podcasts clearly empower large swaths of the global population to air their own opinions and reports, but at the same time, the sheer number of individual voices that end up flooding the media-space seems to reinforce the *relative* unimportance of each one.

The result is that most audiences will still be primarily inundated by whichever voice is most powerfully, or ubiquitously (is that a word?) projected, and simultaneously corresponds to their core values/worldview.

That being said, maybe where the true value of internet-enabled citizen jounralism lies, therefore, is in fomenting a sort of new *information culture* whereby previously passive media consumers are now more actively searching out a multitude of voices before reaching their opinion on a given issue.

Does this idea make any sense? I haven't really discussed it with anyone yet.

Anyway, if it appeals to you, i'd love to continue the dialogue on 'Sounds Iranian'.

best, -j

Anonymous said...

Blogs are a great tool for ordinary citizens, "empowerment", etc...
Seems there is a lack of a sort of structure to make it efficient in social level. I suggest you look up Thomas Homer-Dixon.
I have a post about it:
http://homeyra.wordpress.com/
2006/11/20/this-sounds-right-to-me/

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Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

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