Weblogs as a bridging genre

Purpose – Aims to describe systematically the characteristics of weblogs (blogs) – frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence and which are the latest genre of internet communication to attain widespread popularity.Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents the results of a quantitative content analysis of 203 randomly selected blogs, comparing the empirically observable features of the corpus with popular claims about the nature of blogs, and finding them to differ in a number of respects.Findings – Notably, blog authors, journalists and scholars alike exaggerate the extent to which blogs are interlinked, interactive, and oriented towards external events, and underestimate the importance of blogs as individualistic, intimate forms of self‐expression.Originality/value – Based on the profile generated by the empirical analysis, considers the likely antecedents of the blog genre, situates it with respect to the dominant forms of digital communica...

[1]  Laurie Mcneill,et al.  Teaching an Old Genre New Tricks: The Diary on the Internet , 2003 .

[2]  Nan Zheng,et al.  Issue Publics on the Web: Applying Network Theory to the War Blogosphere , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[3]  Kirsten A. Foot,et al.  Online Structure for Political Action: Exploring Presidential Campaign Web Sites from the 2000 American Election , 2002 .

[4]  Briony J. Oates,et al.  New frontiers for information systems research: computer art as an information system , 2006, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[5]  W. Orlikowski,et al.  Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media , 1992 .

[6]  Marcia J. Bates,et al.  AN EXPLORATORY PROFILE OF PERSONAL HOME PAGES: CONTENT, DESIGN, METAPHORS , 1997 .

[7]  John Rodzilla.  We've got blog : how weblogs are changing our culture , 2002 .

[8]  Sally J. McMillan.  Health Communication and the Internet: Relations Between Interactive Characteristics of the Medium and Site Creators, Content, and Purpose , 1999 .

[9]  Daniel Chandler,et al.  Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web , 1998 .

[10]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Genre repertoire: norms and forms for work and interaction , 1994 .

[11]  G. Gaskell,et al.  Classical Content Analysis: a Review , 2000 .

[12]  Martin Ortlieb,et al.  Online Place and Person‐Making: Matters of the Heart and Self‐Expression , 2006 .

[13]  Thomas Erickson,et al.  Making sense of computer-mediated communication (CMC): conversations as genres, CMC systems as genre ecologies , 2000, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[14]  S. Herring,et al.  Women and Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs , 2004 .

[15]  Susan C. Herring,et al.  Gender and Power in Online Communication , 2001 .

[16]  Marc A. Smith.  Invisible Crowds in Cyberspace: Mapping the Social Structure of the Usenet , 1999 .

[17]  Carolyn R. Miller.  Genre as social action , 1984 .

[18]  Hugh Miller,et al.  Gender and web home pages , 2000, Comput. Educ..

[19]  A. Strauss,et al.  The Discovery of Grounded Theory , 1967 .

[20]  S. Herring.  Two variants of an electronic message schema , 1996 .

[21]  Carina Ihlström Eriksson,et al.  Evolution of the Web news genre-the slow move beyond the print metaphor , 2000, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[22]  Inna Kouper,et al.  Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis "From the Bottom Up" , 2005, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[23]  J. Nunamaker,et al.  Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences , 1999 .

[24]  Kevin Crowston,et al.  Reproduced and Emergent Genres of Communication on the World Wide Web , 2000, Inf. Soc..

[25]  Rebecca Blood,et al.  The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice On Creating And Maintaining Your Blog , 2002 .

[26]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[27]  L Sherr.  Women and children. , 1991, AIDS care.

[28]  Barbara Warnick,et al.  Appearance or reality? Political parody on the web in campaign ‘96 , 1998 .

[29]  E. Wenger,et al.  Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[30]  S. Herring.  Computer-mediated communication : linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives , 1996 .

[31]  Michael A. Shepherd,et al.  The evolution of cybergenres , 1998, Proceedings of the Thirty-First Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[32]  Rebecca Blood.  We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture , 2002 .

[33]  Andrew Dillon,et al.  Genres and the Web: is the personal home page the first uniquely digital genre? , 2000 .

[34]  Mark Aaron Polger.  Rewriting the Holocaust Online: A Discourse Analysis of Holocaust Denial Web Sites , 2004 .

[35]  Douglas Douglas,et al.  The multi-dimensional approach to linguistic analyses of genre variation: An overview of methodology and findings , 1992, Comput. Humanit..

[36]  Louisa Ha,et al.  Interactivity reexamined: A baseline analysis of early business web sites , 1998 .

[37]  A. Strauss,et al.  The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research aldine de gruyter , 1968 .

[38]  Nicola D ring.  Personal Home Pages on the Web: A Review of Research , 2002 .

[39]  Barbara Wasson,et al.  Self-Regulated Learning and Open Writing. , 2006 .