Monday, March 21, 2011

Joey's Blogging

Blogging is a practice that is mundane and yet radical in its potential to transform individual and collective agency and activism. Discuss.

Mayfield, Ross. “The Political Effects of Blogging: Call for Indicators.” Corante. 9 Feb. 2004. 14 Mar. 2010 .

The article argues where the appearance of participatory media like blogs is agreed that will make a change in the political process. Individuals and groups can public their views and reflect the issues even that are not mainstream and causes low attention without recourse to the limits of big media. This influence of blogging towards political process can be used to argue that blogging is affecting the behavior of both politicians and non-political parties such as the activist and individuals. A medium is created where individuals or groups could find each other easily and organize around issues and candidates. This is thus used to argue where there exists a transformation in the medium of communication as the exceeding amount of authors and readers of political and related blogs has caused a greater amount of information transfer, and traditional political and foreign affairs magazines and columns to drop behind. Many of the readers and authors influence the official and also hold opinion of the unofficial. While the medium offers the potential for the like-minded groups, it also provides the potential for public communication and interactive discussion. These can be particularly influential when articulated publicly by those whose views and interests do not fall along trivial party alignments. This blogosphere allowing the public involvement is also transforming individuals in its participation of political activity and are allowing higher level of influence on policy publication.

Bradshaw, Paul. “Blogging journalists: survey results pt. 1: context and methodology.” Online Journalism Blog. 14 Oct. 2008. 14 Mar. 2010.

The article argues that blogs is now part of the editorial furniture. Most of the US newspapers, news organizations and European news organizations offered journalist-authored blogs, and there are signs from editors that these figures are going to rise gradually. In a short history for existing over a decade, the format of blogs has undergone a number of developments. The article is then supported by showing the transformation of blog. At the beginning, it is just lists of links to similar sites, then turning into more diary-like, with along attitude of personality and more recently adopted by news organizations, journalists started to write blogs of their own, teamed up with blogging and citizen journalism operations. Some argued that the generic qualities of blogs has been affected once again, and more recently there have been suggestions that blogging has lost its focus in the jostle for attention or that successful bloggers curb their creativity in the consciousness of a wider audience while much of the personal material that was previously published on blogs is now being published on ‘life-streaming’ and ‘micro-blogging’ platforms like Twitter. While journalism at least aspires to objectivity, blogs treat the audience as a co-creator, while traditional journalism treats them as a passive recipient; and whereas blog journalism is incomplete and fragmented, traditional journalism is structured and closed.

“Blogs Influence Consumer Purchases More than Social Networks.” Marketing Charts. 31 Oct. 2008. 14 Mar. 2010.

The article is about a research study of more than 2,000 online consumers in the US - “Harnessing the Power of Blogs”. It strongly shows that blogs can influence blog readers’ purchase decisions by supported data. Retailer Daily reports that in the past four years, the number of people who read blogs at least once a month has grown 300% and what they read influences their purchase decisions strongly, playing a key role in ushering them to the point of actual purchase. The study aimed to uncover changing behavior around blog discovery and consumption, how blogs factor into consumer purchase decisions, and the nature of blog influence on buying behavior. For example, frequent blog readers say they trust relevant blog content for purchase decisions more than content from social networking sites, the study found. Blogs factor in to critical stages of the purchase process, weighing most heavily at the actual moment of a purchase decision, according to the study: Among respondents who say they have trusted blog content for purchase decisions in the past, over half say blogs played a role in the critical moment they decided to move forward with a purchase. For frequent blog readers, advertisements on blogs are on par with sponsored search results, one of the most prevalent and successful forms of advertising on the web and trust of blog advertising exceeds that around social networking site advertising.

Hurlbert, Wayne. “Activist Blogs: Blogging For Societal Change.” WebProNews. 27 Nov. 2005. 14 Mar. 2010.

The author has reasonably argued that blogging is developing as a new powerful tool that could change the world due to its huge power over business, non-profit organization and among individuals. The passage could be used to conclude that blogging has provide a new forum for which activist could expand their influence or spread their views in a much greater scope with the availability of blogging. Blog comments could be lively and interesting, but at the same time could also be attacking and filled with extreme opinions. It’s important to maintain a balance of comments, and to avoid the temptation to delete opposing viewpoints. This can then be used to argue that the ability to hide one’s identity behind the blog wall allows the comments are left to be view openly and freely, and as well allowing discussions and debates to be greatly exercised through the internet. This is important as in the blogging creates opportunity for individuals to express oneself, as well as an opportunity for activist to spread negative or confronting information. Blogging will enable one to voice out in a crowd of other worthwhile organizations. It can then be argued that blogging transform the capacity of transfer of information, including how far, how much and how fast the information could spread, thus also transforming the behavior and views of those who received the information.

Camson, Josh. “Can Blogs Influence the Supreme Court?” Social Media Law Student. 14 May. 2009. 14 Mar. 2010.

The author states that a student note in the Stanford Law Review has argued that blogs can and eventually will influence the Supreme Court. In Rachel Lee’s article, she discusses the flaws in the current ethics law to handle this form of ex parte communication with the court. Nobody, Lee included, really knows if Justices or their staff are reading legal blogs like Social Media Law Student. Lee suggests that there exist a trend towards citing more online sources, including blogs and the fact that on a recent workday registered over a hundred hits from an IP address registered to the Court. This can thus be used in argument where blogging is potentially capable in transforming the way where new information and opinions persuade the decision making or interpretation process of individuals and court. Although Lee admits that the visits to blogging could be done by court personnel instead of Justices, yet her arguments that the constant visit will be exposed to lists of cert petitions to watch, allowing inflow of views in various other cases, and recaps of oral arguments, along with associations to news stories or other blogs with similar material — all touching on the merits of pending litigation, which the blogging should be considered potentially influential.

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