This week's readings are concerned with practices and implications of blogging. In the span of about a decade blogging has grown into a respected form of self publishing, with enough credibility to challenge stalwart traditional news organizations for the attention of readers. Just what does all this personal, push button publishing mean for the future of media? The answer to that, I suppose, requires a little review of recent history.
Blogging expert Rebecca Blood identifies the first generation of blogs, or weblogs as they were known then, popping up around 1998. Text heavy, link laden web pages hand coded by web enthusiasts typified this early generation of blogs and spoke to the unique interests of their author/coders. With the release of push button publishing tools like Blogger in 1999 blogging exploded and became a bona fide phenomenon. Next up: a redefining of "media" to include public participation.
It is this new definition of media that I find most fascinating. As a stalwart industry, literally monopolized in the hands of a privileged few for generations, media though one of the very cornerstones of democracy was not a democratic institution. Irony of ironies. I find it remarkable that blogging has risen to such prominence so quickly as to change the very paradigm of publishing- and to such extent that traditional publishers are often striving to look and feel more like blogs. Though with such an overwhelming surge in popularity it could be argued that a shift in modus operendi was inevitable. Still, the shift represents quite a feat.
So what's next on the horizon for this new form of publication? I'm going to venture out on a limb (a little bit anyway) and predict video blogging, or vlogging. With the ever dropping price of quality production equipment, and growing knowledge of SEO principles (You do know how dramatically video can effect search engine rankings, right?), as well as the fact that YouTube is actually currently the largest search engine on the web, I predict the next generation of self publishing authors will actually be auteurs. Interestingly, such a shift may actually necessitate another redefining of media and indeed of blogging. And the democratization of media marches on.
The democratization of media is very exciting to me. I worked in television newsrooms for more than 20 years and there was no other way to be a broadcast journalist. I tell my husband (a news photographer) all the time that we need to grab our piece of real estate on the Web and do our own thing. We hope to do documentaries and put them on a website. This opportunity was unheard of ten years ago.
ReplyDeletetameka, your post are always so sophisticated and i really enjoy reading them. i did not know that video effect seo, but it makes sense to me now. now in terms of the next generation blog, the the times ran an interesting story about the future of blogging, "Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter." according to a report conducted by the pew research center, blogging is popular among different demographics. thought the younger generation is losing interest in blogging, those approaching middle age and older are sticking with it.
ReplyDeleteLike Yvonne, I am particularly interested in your claims about the future of blogging. Blogging definitely changed what it meant to be credible, accurate, and a trusted news source and I think microblogging is still trying to gather this momentum. If younger generations are getting "bored" with traditional blogging, how will sites like Twitter and Tumblr change the way we report?
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