the phenomenon called blog

8/8/2019 The phenomenon called blog

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. CHAPTER I: Introducing the Concept of Blog

I.1. Introducing the Concept of Blog

I.2. From Early Times to Present Day Blogs

.

I.2.1. Amateur Radio ..

I.2.2. Bulletin Board Systems

I.2.3. Personal WebPages .

I.2.4. The Birth of Blogging .

I.2.5. Have you heard of Blogger? .

I.3. Steps in Creating Your Own Blog

I.4. Classification of Blogs .

3. CHAPTER II: Pragmatics- Great Communication Challenge

.

II.1. Pragmatics- Great Communication Challenge ..

II.2. Pragmatics- Intentions in Communication ..

II.2.1. First Communicative Intentions .

II.2.2. Second Communicative Intentions

II.3. Intentions in Political Communication Blogs

II.4. Be careful what you say! .

4. CHAPTER III: Why Blog? .


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III.1. Why

Blog? .................................................................

III.2. Advantges and Disadvantages of a Blog over a

Website

..

III.3. Tips For A Better Weblog

5. Glossary of Terms Related to Blogs

6. Conclusion .

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY


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Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of blog

from early times to present day. From the age of Pliny the Young, to

the use of diaries and ending with blogs, people kept events in their

life in a certain order.

The disposal of this paper is in three main chapters, some of

them having subchapters of their own.

The first chapter of the present paper deals with the concept of

blog, definitions given along time and the rapid development which

blogging undertook. In the history part, we have a representation of

the predecessors of modern blogging from amateur radio and Bulletin

Board Systems to the dawn of the first true blogs. Although it was

quiet difficult to classify, as there were no specific criteria, Ive tried to

present in general the types of blogs one can come into contact with.

Whether personal or corporate, blogs follow almost thje same pattern,and the authors intentions are to produce some response from the

the reader. The reader relies on linguistic and extralinguistic

information in order to understand the message.


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The second chapter is about the close link between Pragmatics,

the intentions of communication and Blogs. It doesnt matter whether

we are authors or readers of a blog, we all encounter difficulties when

we need to transmit or understand a message. Even if we talk

different languages, but both the writer and the reader use the same

code a communication can be established. The desire is totally

different from what is intended. For example one can desire to write a

blog, which will become well known and popular, but cannot intend to

do it unless he is an already well known person, his message is of high

interests and he benefits of publicity on most popular sites. The

promise of the web was that everyone could publish, that a thousandvoices could flourish, communicate, and connect. The truth was that

only those people who knew how to code a web page could make their

voices heard.

The third chapter of the present paper focuses on the question:

Why blog? and it is of a very personal approach. I have also pointed

the advantages and disadvantages that we can encounter if we want

to create a blog. It is an attempt to convince people to take part in the

world of the Internet which according to Dr. Weinberger in World of

Ends nobody owns, everybody can use, and anybody can improve.

You can also meet some very interesting tips that can help you built a

successful blog.

I have finished my paper with a Glossary of terms related to

blog, in order to make clear if one should have troubles in

understanding phrases along the paper.

I hope well find it easy to read and captivating.
http://worldofends.com/http://worldofends.com/http://worldofends.com/http://worldofends.com/


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CHAPTER I


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INTRODUCING THE CONCEPT OF BLOG

CHAPTER I

I.1. Introducing the Concept of Blog:

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the definitions, the origin

and not least the history of the word blog. In order to establish a

certain definition of the word and to discover its origins we have to

follow the timeline since 1992 when Tim Berners-Lee created Whats

new page, then 1996- when the term weblog was coined by John

Barger, 1999- when Pyra Labs created the free web application

Blogger, owned today by Google and 2003- when the Oxford EnglishDictionary included the term weblog, weblogging and weblogger in

it. The term "blog" is a truncated blend of the words "web" and "log."

It's a noun, but it can be used as a verb, to maintain or add content to

a blog.


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Blog is in original a part of the word weblog and is defined by

the Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English as an online

diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web

page.

Acording to Mal Keenan, the term web log was initially coined

refer to a servers log file and then expanded to include the meaning

of online personal journaling. To avoid confusion, the word blog

was adopted to refer to personal journaling. Nowadays a blog is

defined as an online publication where an author puts his or her

personal thoughts and opinions from the most intimate to corporate

ideas, concerns or events, in chronological order on the net.(Mal

Keenan, 2005, A Basic Introduction to Blogging

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/articles/ Introduction-to-

Blogging.htm)

A blog is a publication of personal thoughts, experiences, and

web links. It is updated frequently and is usually a mixture of what is

happening in a person's life and what is happening on the web or in

the media. (www.simplehostfinder.com/glossary.html)

A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and

Web links.(keywordmktg.com/Glossary.aspx)

The word blog is derived from the combination of the two

words, web and log. Blogs are virtual diaries created by individuals

and stored on the Internet. Blogs generally consist of text and images

and can appear in a calendar type format.

(www.netalert.net.au/03003-Glossary.asp)

A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually

maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary,

descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog"
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=6&oi=define&q=http://www.simplehostfinder.com/glossary.html&usg=AFQjCNEOrFk8w9LUznONVGC0obLQ9bmxMQhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=7&oi=define&q=http://keywordmktg.com/Glossary.aspx&usg=AFQjCNG01OdU5TQQcozEu9Jp6qj8mw9qAwhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=22&oi=define&q=http://www.netalert.net.au/03003-Glossary.asp&usg=AFQjCNFMdlUeG6NYzDpZlDYES5Ah0FWGXAhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websitehttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=6&oi=define&q=http://www.simplehostfinder.com/glossary.html&usg=AFQjCNEOrFk8w9LUznONVGC0obLQ9bmxMQhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=7&oi=define&q=http://keywordmktg.com/Glossary.aspx&usg=AFQjCNG01OdU5TQQcozEu9Jp6qj8mw9qAwhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=22&oi=define&q=http://www.netalert.net.au/03003-Glossary.asp&usg=AFQjCNFMdlUeG6NYzDpZlDYES5Ah0FWGXAhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website


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can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a

blog. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#Community_and_cataloging)

Web log is a journal kept on the Internet. This journal is often

updated daily and contains the information that the person

maintaining the blog (the blogger) wishes to share with the world.

(www.avatar.co.nz/resources/web-site-design-web-marketing-

definitions-b.html)

Blog is short for Web log, and our Web pages that work as a

journal that our normally updated daily. Blogging sites can provide

excellent information on many topics, although content can be

subjective. (www.le.ac.uk/webcentre/help/glossary.html)Like an online dairy. This can be about and be used for anything

at all, it can be used for news, reviews, products, for a business

organization (germworks.net/blog/2007/02/11/web-jargon-explained/)

We can notice that the word blog was originally known as

weblog written either together, or separately web log. Seeing it

written separately and if we forget about the word web we can

indeed say it could be taken as the log that used to be kept by the

captains of big ships. The difference represents the fact it was written

in a special notebook and it was not for the public, but only for the

captain and perhaps the crew. By relating facts in chronological order

it offered the possibility of placing the events in time and space, in

case of disasters. The blog contains personal thoughts and

experiences which the author made public. The blog may also contain

different topics although if not all the time with a subjective content.

This is a web log or online diary hosted on specific sites such as

www.blogger.com. It offers readers the opportunity to reply to

opinions and link to their own blogs.

(www.iab.ie/FAQs/DefinitionofTerms/)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#Community_and_cataloginghttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=3&oi=define&q=http://www.avatar.co.nz/resources/web-site-design-web-marketing-definitions-b.html&usg=AFQjCNF8kiu065IRfaY7mGRIemUm1Dhhnwhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=3&oi=define&q=http://www.avatar.co.nz/resources/web-site-design-web-marketing-definitions-b.html&usg=AFQjCNF8kiu065IRfaY7mGRIemUm1Dhhnwhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=11&oi=define&q=http://www.le.ac.uk/webcentre/help/glossary.html&usg=AFQjCNGNMO-6ciDCssjco0_-7OROGzuVPQhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=4&oi=define&q=http://germworks.net/blog/2007/02/11/web-jargon-explained/&usg=AFQjCNGji2jtddT7iBo-1MuExD6bvTWHUQhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=8&oi=define&q=http://www.iab.ie/FAQs/DefinitionofTerms/&usg=AFQjCNEfV0jpPTlsujazTTnoHYFT3J7Ccghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#Community_and_cataloginghttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=3&oi=define&q=http://www.avatar.co.nz/resources/web-site-design-web-marketing-definitions-b.html&usg=AFQjCNF8kiu065IRfaY7mGRIemUm1Dhhnwhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=3&oi=define&q=http://www.avatar.co.nz/resources/web-site-design-web-marketing-definitions-b.html&usg=AFQjCNF8kiu065IRfaY7mGRIemUm1Dhhnwhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=11&oi=define&q=http://www.le.ac.uk/webcentre/help/glossary.html&usg=AFQjCNGNMO-6ciDCssjco0_-7OROGzuVPQhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=4&oi=define&q=http://germworks.net/blog/2007/02/11/web-jargon-explained/&usg=AFQjCNGji2jtddT7iBo-1MuExD6bvTWHUQhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=8&oi=define&q=http://www.iab.ie/FAQs/DefinitionofTerms/&usg=AFQjCNEfV0jpPTlsujazTTnoHYFT3J7Ccg


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A blog is information that is instantly published to a Web site.

Blog scripting allows someone to automatically post information to a

Web site. The information first goes to a blogger Web site. Then the

information is automatically inserted into a template tailored for your

Web site. (mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/netterms.htm)

A blog is basically a journal or personal diary that is available

on the web. Blogs are typically updated daily using content

management software that allows people with little or no technical

background to update and maintain

them.(newsletter.blizzardinternet.com/tech-glossary/)

This is a term coming from the combination of the terms weblog it is a web page that serves as publicly accessible journal for the

author. It can be formal or informal, is usually updated daily and

reflects the personality of the author. (tig.lsc.gov/techglossary.php)

Blog is a web journal which is otherwise called as a "weblog".

entries are made on a regular or daily basis in a blog like an online

diary. Some blogs have definite authors who disclose their names and

some with anonymous authors who use a nickname.

(www.searchenginegenie.com/search-engine-glossary-b.htm)

This is the slang term for web log. It is a journal that is kept on

the internet. Someone who keeps a journal on the internet like this is

called a blogger. They are typically updated daily or on a regular

basis.

(www.corporatewebsitemarketing.com/search-engine-marketing-

glossary.html)

The blog is said to be the updated daily journal kept on the net. I

dont agree because the purpose of a diary was not to be shown to

people. A diary was considered too personal to share, and according

to definitions the diary was a book in which one could keep his
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=5&oi=define&q=http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/netterms.htm&usg=AFQjCNGBHo5K6b7aSKRNYEMhuQAIj9ijywhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=14&oi=define&q=http://newsletter.blizzardinternet.com/tech-glossary/&usg=AFQjCNGpLBwQ9LPCGVELSI1LD46Dr1XcUQhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=16&oi=define&q=http://tig.lsc.gov/techglossary.php&usg=AFQjCNFVxvDqYtidCfm_cJB_AfV1E-4F7Qhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=17&oi=define&q=http://www.searchenginegenie.com/search-engine-glossary-b.htm&usg=AFQjCNHHJOlHUIX6kx5NtcTcdk7pOqvaKghttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=21&oi=define&q=http://www.corporatewebsitemarketing.com/search-engine-marketing-glossary.html&usg=AFQjCNGH-mnpEXM5EPfmABhLgvWTSqIbQAhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=21&oi=define&q=http://www.corporatewebsitemarketing.com/search-engine-marketing-glossary.html&usg=AFQjCNGH-mnpEXM5EPfmABhLgvWTSqIbQAhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=5&oi=define&q=http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/netterms.htm&usg=AFQjCNGBHo5K6b7aSKRNYEMhuQAIj9ijywhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=14&oi=define&q=http://newsletter.blizzardinternet.com/tech-glossary/&usg=AFQjCNGpLBwQ9LPCGVELSI1LD46Dr1XcUQhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=16&oi=define&q=http://tig.lsc.gov/techglossary.php&usg=AFQjCNFVxvDqYtidCfm_cJB_AfV1E-4F7Qhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=17&oi=define&q=http://www.searchenginegenie.com/search-engine-glossary-b.htm&usg=AFQjCNHHJOlHUIX6kx5NtcTcdk7pOqvaKghttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=21&oi=define&q=http://www.corporatewebsitemarketing.com/search-engine-marketing-glossary.html&usg=AFQjCNGH-mnpEXM5EPfmABhLgvWTSqIbQAhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=21&oi=define&q=http://www.corporatewebsitemarketing.com/search-engine-marketing-glossary.html&usg=AFQjCNGH-mnpEXM5EPfmABhLgvWTSqIbQA


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experiences each day. Yet keeping events in a chronological order,

posting thoughts and reflecting the personality of the author

determined people to name it the online diary. Your most recent posts

are placed at the top of your home page along with everything else

you published that day. An integrated calendar keeps track of your

daily posts and allows site users to quickly access archived posts. The

information you may find is not necessarily valid, or entirely true. The

blog, is a diary that is first written on a computer and then posted on

the World Wide Web. It allows a person or a group of persons to share

a running log of events and personal insights with those who access

their page. The blogs which have political or current-events themesdue to their great number of accesses have and become soap boxes

(www.pvt.com/oth/glossary.htm)

After having read all these definitions I got to the conclusion

that the web log, short form blog, or the online diary, offers the

possibility of keeping your thoughts, feelings and events in your life on

a web page. A Weblog allows you to easily publish a wide variety of

content to the Web. You can publish written essays, annotated links,

documents, graphics, and multimedia. It is not only an easy way to

publish to the Web but a way to organize your entire published

product over time so that friends, associates, and customers can

easily find and interact with it. It is very important because you have

access to it when you use the internet and you don't need to be a

programmer in order to use a Weblog.

But where did all this come from? A blog is often a mixture of

what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the

Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site.

I.2. From Early Times to Present Day Blogs
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=2&oi=define&q=http://www.pvt.com/oth/glossary.htm&usg=AFQjCNHD3iJwihcLfieLjkJs6C0WVcc4Nghttp://www.google.com/url?sa=X&start=2&oi=define&q=http://www.pvt.com/oth/glossary.htm&usg=AFQjCNHD3iJwihcLfieLjkJs6C0WVcc4Ng


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How did all started? Where there predecessors to blogging? Who

was the first blogger? These are some questions that have aroused in

my mind from the first moment I heard the term blog. In the following

paragraphs I will try and underline the significant stages that gave

birth to the modern day blogging. It is well known nowadays that

people kept online diaries long before the term blog was coined, but

once with the introduction of automated published systems, most

notably Blogger at blogger.com, they came aware of the term. More

and more people use services such as Blogger, when they want to

simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

The question Who was the first blogger? arouse many disputes.

Hundreds of weblog pioneers will compete for that title, and it will be

interesting to see who they will consense upon. William Safire, a

language columnist, uses now and then the word consense as a

neologism: consense is a verb that can replace form a

consensus. Not the opposite of nonsense.

We should reach back in history to find the person who first

popularized the idea of influencing the world by using some medium

to get across his ideas to large groups. In the search for the Grand

Originator, bloxicographers should not limit themselves to finding the

first to use the Internet. Blogging is broader than creating a weblog

to express a personal opinion and/or to establish an information

community. Although the word blogosphere was coined in 1999 by

Brad L. Graham as a joke and re-minted in all seriousness in 2002

by William Quick with his Daily Pundit, we ought to dig more deeply to

place blogging in the great scheme of human communication.

Joseph Felcone, an antiquarian bookseller in Princeton N.J. was

the first to suggest a nominee. In his most recent catalogue of books
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/SAFIRE-BIO.htmlhttp://www.dailypundit.com/http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/SAFIRE-BIO.htmlhttp://www.dailypundit.com/


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for sale, he lists under the headline The First Blogger? a book by

Plinius Caecilius Secundus, Gaius, better known to all of us as Pliny the

Younger, a consul of the Roman empire. The book is titled

Epistolarum libri X. Panegyricus. We all recognize epistle as a

letter; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, panegyricus is a

public eulogy. Thus, young Plinys book, one of nine he published

between A.D. 99 and 109, would be titled if published today: Letters

in Praise of Great Friends. This Roman consul is said to have

commented on political events, social life in Rome and the provinces,

and the domestic events of the day. Some letters are paeans of praise

for particular friends, whereas others are requests for support of hisown agenda. Unlike many of the existing letters of Cicero, Plinys

letters were intended for public consumption, and are well-crafted

from a literary perspective. Therefore could this not be the

definition of the pre-blogger, especially one touting a particular

candidate for office or seeking support for his own altruistic ideas or

nefarious schemes? Pliny the Younger (son of Pliny the Elder) deserves

consideration for the title of First Blogger in Joseph Felcones

opinion.

Others commenting on this OUP blog will put forward the

abovementioned Cicero, who preceded the Plinys by a century, famed

for his denunciation in the Senate of an assassination conspiracist.

Even if he doesnt have a blog, Saphire affirms he had discovered the

first columnists: Simeon Stylites the Elder. According to the OED, a

stylite was an ascetic who lived on the top of a pillar. (Greekstylos means pillar.) The sainted Simeon the Elder took up

residence atop a column in Syria in AD 423. He remained atop that

column and others for 37 years, each loftier and narrower than the

preceding; his final column was 66 feet high. Simeon the Elder stood
http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/pliny/pliny_y.htmhttp://www.livius.org/pi-pm/pliny/pliny_y.htmhttp://www.oed.com/http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/cicero.htmlhttp://www.livius.org/pi-pm/pliny/pliny_y.htmhttp://www.livius.org/pi-pm/pliny/pliny_y.htmhttp://www.oed.com/http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/cicero.html


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day and night, leaning on a rail, dependent for food on what his

disciples (and presumably the Younger) brought him by ladder. He

preached sermons to those gathered around his column, who then

went out and spread his pastoral teachings. Other columnists took up

his technique and were also called stylites. He was the subject of a

poem by Tennyson, concluding with I, Simeon, The watcher on the

column till the end.This was the first columnist. Who was the first

blogger, lefts to be decided by those who will access the blog

concerning this theme.

Blogs aren't as new as one may think. They have actually been

around since the early days of the Internet. In the strictest sense, a

blog is someone's online record of the Web sites he or she visits.

Before the proliferation of blogging, there have already been various

ways in which people can reach a mass audience with their online or

offline views. We shall explore how blogging came to be, from

amateur radio and bulletin board systems to the dawn of the first true

blogs.

I.2.1. Amateur Radio

In the early 1990s the amateur radio was the means through

which people communicated their opinions to friends, relatives or

strangers, before the Internet became popular. In order to be able to

operate an amateur radio station a person would have to obtain a

license after passing a test or a series of examinations. The degree of

difficulty differed from country to country. Once they obtained the

license they received a unique call sign with which to identify in order

to work legally. That was not enough. They needed specialized

equipment to be able to engage in a communication with other

amateur radio operators. With the right equipment, they could share


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news or personal beliefs. By the mid 1990, once they had access to

internet they began posting the texts of their radio sessions on their

personal web pages. These were called text logs which are also known

as glogs. Together with the radio station, the text logs can be

considered the ancestors of todays podcast, which are recordings

placed on web hosts and can be downloaded as audio files.

I.2.2. Bulletin Board Systems

Abbreviated BBS, the Bulletin board systems have also existed

before the Internet. The Computer Bulletin Board System (CBBS) went

operational in 1978 and was the first known BBS. It was not difficult toutilize and the users could read news, play different games or even

exchange views through a digital message board. They used a

terminal program in order get into contact with other BBS users. But

as it is today the necessity to speed up things got rid of the old slow in

speed modems which were an impediment in the development.

During the 1980s, the BBS obtained recognition because of the

introducing of faster modems which allowed people from different

regions to get into contact. The faster modems proved to be a way to

send personal data and receive other persons opinions and data.

During the Bulletin board system period the exchange of color images

took place, due to the appearance of the GIF image format in 1987. By

the beginning of the 1990s the Bulletin board systems had become

much appreciated. There were two monthly magazines devoted to

these systems. But that did not last for too long. Due to the

increasingly growth of Internet Usenetgroups and Internet forum and

message board communities, in the mid-1990s bulletin board systems

lost their position. Lets not forget that these systems, even before the

arrival of the Internet, had allowed people from the same region to


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I.2.4. The Birth of Blogging

Before knowing and fully using the term blog, people who would

write on sites or who kept online journals were called diarists,

journalists or escroibitionists. Blogging platforms are sites specially

dedicated to keeping online diaries, personal information. They are

considered to be among the first forms of blogging.

Dynamic Timeline:

January

Swarthmore student Justin Hall creates first blog ever, Links.net.

December 1997

Online diarist Jorn Barger coins the term Weblog for logging the

Web.

April 1999

Programmer Peter Merholz shortens Weblog to blog.

August 1999

Blogger rolls out the first popular, free blog-creation service.

Brad L. Graham coins Blogosphere as a joke

January

Boing Boing is born.

July

AndrewSullivan.com launches.

February 2002

Heather Armstrong is fired for discussing her job on her blog, Dooce.

Dooced becomes a verb: Fired for blogging.
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August 2002

Nick Denton launches Gizmodo, the first in what will become a blog

empire. Blogads launches, the first broker of blog advertising.

The word Blogosphere is re-minted in all seriousness in 2002 by

William Quick with his Daily Pundit

December 2002

Talking Points Memo highlights Trent Lotts racially charged

comments; thirteen days later, Lott resigns from his post as Senate

majority leader.

December 2002

Gawker launches, igniting the gossip-blog boom.

March 2003

Salam Pax, an anonymous Iraqi blogger, gains worldwide audience

during the Iraq war.

June

Google launches AdSense, matching ads to blog content.

August 2003

The first avalanche of ads on political blogs.

September 2003

Jason Calacanis founds Weblogs, Inc., which eventually grows into a

portfolio of 85 blogs.

January

Denton launches Wonkette.
http://www.dailypundit.com/http://www.gawker.com/http://www.wonkette.com/http://www.dailypundit.com/http://www.gawker.com/http://www.wonkette.com/


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March 2004

Calacanis poaches Gizmodo writer Peter Rojas from Denton. Denton

proclaims himself royally shafted on his personal blog.

December 2004

Merriam-Webster declares blog the Word of the Year.

January

Study finds that 32 million Americans read blogs.

May 2005

The Huffington Post launches.

October 2005

Calacanis sells his blogs to AOL for $25 million.

December 2005

An estimated $100 million worth of blog ads are sold this year.

January

Time leases Andrew Sullivans blog, adding it to its Website.

February 2006

The Huffington Post surges to become fourth most-linked-to blog.

Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web, first posted a

web page in 1992 at CERN that kept a list of all new web sites as they

come online. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications

(NCSA) started a Whats New list of sites in June 1993. Notably the site

provided entries sorts by date and the Whats New links includedcommentary. This service was eventually taken over by Netscape in

what became on of the more popular websites of its time. In January

1994, Justin Hall, currently a freelance journalist, launches Justins

Home Page which would later become Links from the Underground.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/


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The site included links to and reviews of other sites. Notably on 10

January 1996, Hall commences writing an online journal with dated

daily entries, although each daily post is linked by through an index

page. Of the journal he writes Some days, before I go to bed, I think

about my day, and how it meshed with my life, and I write a little

about what learned me. In February 1996, Dave Winer writes a

weblog that chronicles the 24 Hours of Democracy Project. After Jorn

Barger introduced the term weblog into popular use in December

1997, blogging as we now know it continued to develop. One of the

oldest online diary hosts was Open Diary, founded in the October of

1998. Open Diary was the online diary host that pioneered the firstweb diaries commenting system. This system allowed visitors to share

their opinions about individual posts.

The origins of modern blogging are often as argued about as

what blogging is. Many point to blogs as websites or webpages that

provided links and comments to other pages, and it is from this basis

that modern blogs emerged.

According to Rebecca Blood in 1998 there were just a handful of

sites of the type that are now identified as weblogs. At the beginning

of 1999 there were only 23 blog known. It all started with Jesse James

Garrett, editor of Infosift, who began compiling a list of "other sites

like his" as he found them in his travels around the web. In November

of that year, he sent that list to Cameron Barrett. In November 1998,

Cameron Barrett published the first list of blog sites on Camworld, and

others maintaining similar sites began sending their URLs to him for

inclusion on the list. It was easy to read all of the weblogs on

Cameron's list, and most interested people did. The first portal

dedicated to listing blogs was launched. Brigitte Eaton launched the

Eatonweb Portal. Eaton evaluated all submissions by a simple
http://www.jjg.net/infosift/http://www.jjg.net/infosift/


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assessment that the site consist of dated entries, one of the criteria

we use to day in identifying a blog. In May 1999, Scott Rosenberg at

Salon.com writes one of the first media articles on the emergence of

weblogs and refers to the growing number of Web Journalists. More

and more people began blogging with the arrival of easy-to-use

blogging platforms which offered technologies such as perm links and

archives creation and commenting systems. Suddenly it became

difficult to read every weblog every day, or even to keep track of all

the new ones that were appearing. This rapid growth continued

steadily until July 1999 when Pitas, the first free build-your-own-

weblog tool launched, and suddenly there were hundreds.There are now, by one count, over 70 million blogs in "print."

I.2.5. Have you heard of Blogger?
http://www.pitas.com/http://www.pitas.com/


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(Blogger.com as seen in 1999, when it was first set up by Pyra Labs)

Although scattered blogs existed during the late 1990s, it

wasn't until 1999 that San Francisco's Pyra Labs created the free Webapplication Blogger. Originally, the hope was that the innovation

would help those collaborating on business projects to coordinate and

share information on an internal Web server, a kind of company

bulletin board. (Chris Mooney, February, 03, 2003 Bloggers History

re-imagined http://meg.hourihan.com/2003/02/bloggershistory-

reimagined). In August, Pyra released Blogger, and

Groksoup launched, and with the ease that these web-based tools

provided, the bandwagon-jumping turned into an explosion. In early

1999, Peter Merholz split up this word into we and blog. Owned

today by Google, Blogger was the first to provide an easy set of tools

for anyone to set up a blog. Over the following 12 months, blogs
http://meg.hourihan.com/2003/02/bloggershistory-reimaginedhttp://meg.hourihan.com/2003/02/bloggershistory-reimaginedhttp://www.pyra.com/http://www.blogger.com/http://www.groksoup.com/http://meg.hourihan.com/2003/02/bloggershistory-reimaginedhttp://meg.hourihan.com/2003/02/bloggershistory-reimaginedhttp://www.pyra.com/http://www.blogger.com/http://www.groksoup.com/


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explode; new companies and tools enter the market. The blogging

explosion took place in 2001.

When we refer to the original weblogs, they were link-driven

sites. Each was a mixture in unique proportions of links, commentary,

and personal thoughts and essays. Weblogs could only be created by

people who already knew how to make a website. The editors of the

sites presented links both to little-known corners of the web and to

current news articles they feel are worthy of note. Such links are

nearly always accompanied by the editor's commentary. Due to the

introduction of Blogger, the weblogs who had always included a mix of

links, commentary, and personal notes, changed their focus from theweb-at-large in favor of a sort of a short-form journal. These blogs,

often updated several times a day, were instead a record of the

blogger's thoughts: something noticed on the way to work, notes

about the weekend, a quick reflection on some subject or another.

Blogger itself places no restrictions on the form of content being

posted. Its web interface, accessible from any browser, consists of an

empty form box into which the blogger can type anything from a

passing thought to an extended essay or a childhood recollection.

With a click, Blogger will post the text on the writer's website, archive

it in the proper place, and present the writer with another empty box,

just waiting to be filled. A filter-style weblog was needed. It provided,

and still does, many advantages to its readers. It revealed glimpses of

an unimagined web to those who have no time to surf. An intelligent

human being filters through the mass of information packaged daily

for our consumption and picks out the interesting, the important, the

overlooked, and the unexpected.

In September of 2000 there were thousands of weblogs: topic-

oriented weblogs, alternative viewpoints, astute examinations of the


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human condition as reflected by mainstream media, short-form

journals, and links to the weird and free-form notebooks of ideas.

Nowadays it is hard to establishe a number of blogs due to the great

number of users who may have an infinite number of blogs on any

theme they want.

(Blogger.com nowdays)

I.3. Steps in Creating Your Own Blog

Its easy to create a blog. On any search engine you look there

will be the same three main steps for you to create your own, personal

blog. The first step consists in creating an account. You have to

introduce an e-mail address you will use to access your blog and other

Google services. This address is confidential and it cant be mentioned

without your agreement. You have to reintroduce your e-mail in order


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to avoid misspelling of certain words. There is a password which you

choose and which will grant you access to your account. Next you

choose the name which you want to appear when you open your page

or when you sign the messages in the blog. Some letters are

generated and you have to introduce them, and not forget to read and

thick, if you agree with the rules of utilization in order to complete the

first step to create your blog.

The second step is shorter then the first but with great

importance. In this step you give your blog a name and you have to

choose an URL address and check for its availability. If it is available

you will see a written message and that means that from now on thisURL will be used by visitors in order to access your blog.

In the third step you choose a template for the blog from those

already existing, with the possibility of changing it latter after your

blog has been configured.

The three steps completed you can now start and edit, posts

photos or anything else on your site. You can create blogs on certain

themes or you can use it for different purposes. We have to consider

blogs from many perspectives, although there are as many unique

types of blogs as there are people.

I.4. Classification of Blogs

It is quiet difficult to classify blogs, which is why I have also put

the word classification in between inverted commas. We dont have

any specialized criteria because they differ not only in th type of

content but also in the way the content is delivered or written.

Therefore we may try and make a general classification as they follow.

Personal blogs are the traditional and the most common type of

blogs. They belong to an individual, are usually updated daily and

comprise on-going diary or commentary. Blogs are often seen as more


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than a way to just communicate. They become a way to reflect on life.

Blogging can have a sentimental quality. We may notice that personal

bloggers usually take pride in their blog posts, even if their blog is

never read by anyone but them. Not many personal blogs rise to fame

and the mainstream.

Corporate blogs are blogs used either internally to enhance the

communication and culture in a corporation or externally for

marketing, branding or PR purposes. A corporate blog can be private,

as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes.

We also have the so called media type blogs. They comprise

music, photos, videos, and links and so on about ones life. A blogcomprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a

linklog. Then we have sites with a map of sketches, called a

sketchblogs or comprising photos, called a photoblogs. Tumblelogs

are type of blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types. Art is also

present in web format under the name of artlog, its main focus are

the art works.

Another classification could be by the device they are formed.

We can mention here the moblogs, which are blogs written using a

mobile devices such as mobile phone or PDA. A type of an early blog,

semi-automated with live video together with text, referred to as

surveillance was Wearable Wireless Webcam. It as an online diary of a

persons personal life combined with text, video, and pictures

transmitted live. These types of journals have been used in legal

matters as evidence.

Blogs focus on particular subjects. This determined another

criterion of classification. The subjects are diverse from political, legal,

projects related to travel, fashion, music, and others. We can also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relationshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Businesshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchbloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photobloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbleloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relationshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Businesshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchbloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photobloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbleloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance


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include here the splog, which is not quiet a legitimate blog and its

sole purpose is that of spamming.

Health care blogs. If you've only heard of blogs from the

consumer press, you might think they consist entirely of blather about

pop culture and outrageous fulminations from the political far left and

far right, but the fact is, there are many serious, well written blogs,

and the major health care issues of the day are discussed on blogs

before, and more extensively, than they are or could ever be

discussed in academic articles.

There are blogs which have multiple users. These blogs are

called collaborative blogs. In most cases there is a single unitingtheme, such as politics or technology that stands at the base of

collaborative blogs. In recent years, the blogosphere has seen the

emergence and growing popularity of more collaborative efforts, often

set up by already established bloggers wishing to pool time and

resources to both reduce the pressure of maintaining a popular

website and to attract a larger readership. Collaborative blogs seem to

have more chance to grow in popularity then blogs with only one user.

Micro-blogging is a

form ofblogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually

less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by

anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user.

These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including

text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web. The most

popular service is calledTwitter, which was launched inJuly 2006 and

won the Web Award in the blog category at the 2007 South by

Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas.[1] The main competitor to

Twitter isJaiku. Recently, however, many new services, with the same

feature of micro-blogging are being born. Digg founder Kevin Rose,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogospherehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_(computing)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaginghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaginghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emailhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Webhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2006http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_by_Southwesthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_by_Southwesthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin%2C_Texashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogs#cite_note-0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaikuhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Rosehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogospherehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_(computing)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaginghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaginghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emailhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Webhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2006http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_by_Southwesthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_by_Southwesthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin%2C_Texashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogs#cite_note-0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaikuhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Rose


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together with three other developers recently launched a service

called Pownce, which integrates micro-blogging with file-sharing and

event invitations. The popular social networking websites Facebook

and MySpace also have a micro-blogging feature, called "status

update".

CHAPTER II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powncehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebookhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powncehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebookhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace


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PRAGMATICS- THE GREAT COMMUNICATION

CHALENGE

CHAPTER II:

II.1. Pragmatics- Great Communication Challenge

The purpose of this chapter is to observe the connection

established between the writer and the reader of a blog and whether

the intentions of the writer are well understood by the reader. It will

take us a lot of time to analyze each category of blog and that is why

the political blogs will be mentioned more along this chapter.

A subfield of linguistics developed in the late 1970s,pragmaticsstudies how people comprehend and produce a communicative act or

speech act in a concrete speech situation which is usually a

conversation (October4,2006 http://www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu/

definition.html).
http://www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu/%20definition.htmlhttp://www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu/%20definition.htmlhttp://www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu/%20definition.htmlhttp://www.gxnu.edu.cn/Personal/szliu/%20definition.html


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Pragmatics is concerned with the study of meaning as

communicated by the speaker, or writer, and interpreted by a listener,

or reader. Pragmatics studies what the speakers, writers meaning is.

It analyses what people mean by their utterances, instead of what the

words or phrases present might mean by themselves. This type of

study involves the interpretation of what people mean in a particular

context and if or how the context influences what is said. We need to

take into consideration how people organize what they want to say in

accordance with who they are talking, or writing to, where, when and

under what circumstances. It is therefore very important what the

contexts meaning is. The speakers intended meaning is explored inorder to help the listener make ideas of what is said in order to arrive

at an interpretation. This way we might explore the unsaid things and

recognize what it was meant to be communicated. Since there is small

amount of meaning, it needs to be investigated closer. We can

communicate a lot of things even if we dont necessarily explain them

in speech. The problem of what is said and what is unsaid arises and

we need to make a choice. The notion of distance appears into main

line. When we talk to people that are close to us in space, time,

physical, social or conceptual plans there is an amount of shared

experience. The speaker decides how much he needs to say on the

assumption of how close or distant he is with the listener. Distance is

another perspective that we need to take into consideration when we

deal with Pragmatics.

Here are the four areas that pragmatics is concerned with,

briefly:

Pragmatics is the study of the speaker meaning

Pragmatics is the study of contextual meaning

Pragmatics is the study of how more gets communicated than is said


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Pragmatics is the study of the expression of relative distance

(George Yule, Pragmatics, 1996, Oxford University Press)

The ability to comprehend and produce a communicative act is

referred to as pragmatic competence (Kasper, 1997) which often

includes one's knowledge about the social distance, social status

between the speakers involved, the cultural knowledge such as

politeness, and the linguistic knowledge explicit.

Implicit meaning , that iswhat can be meant or communicated

beyond what is explicitly or literally said, by means of presuppositions,

implications and implicators.

II.2. Pragmatics- Intentions in Communication

Since the work by Austin and Grice, linguistic pragmatics has

been mainly focused on the communicative use of language

conceived as intentional human action. The study of the agents

beliefs, desires and, particularly, intentions is crucial for

understanding what she has done. Naturally, then, the analysis of

beliefs, desires, and, particularly,

intentions is at the center of pragmatic studies. Grices study on

meaning intentions (Mintentions, Grice 1957, 1969) opened a long

debate on the exact definition of the now so-called communicative

intentions. Most approaches construe intention as a primitive mental

state, i.e., non-definable in terms of other mental states such as

beliefs and desires. Communicative intentions share, of course, the

characteristics of intentions in general, for instance:

- They are the mental causes of actions, that is, they are what

together with some bodily movements constitute an action, as distinct

from a mere event.


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- They have conditions of consistency. You can desire p and desire

not-p

at the same time, but you cannot intend p and intend not-p at the

same

time.

- Their object is presupposed to be attainable by the agent. You can

desire to go to the moon this afternoon, but you cannot intend to go

to the moon this afternoon (unless you are a multimillionaire who has

made an arrangement with some spatial agency).

- Their object represents their conditions of satisfaction.

Communicative intentions have also some features of their own:- They are usually intentions-in-action and not prior intentions (see

Searle 1983 for the distinction).

- They are social, in the Weberian sense of social action, i.e. they are

always oriented towards some other agent the addressee.

- They are overt, that is, they are to be recognized by the addressee.

- Their satisfaction consists precisely in that recognition by the

addressee.

The last three characteristics are already pointed out in the first

version of M-intentions (Grice 1957): A meant something by x is

(roughly) equivalent to A intended the utterance ofx to produce

some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this

intention. (Grice 1957/1989, p. 220.) And their exact formulation

seems to constitute the reason for the main critiques and subsequent

reformulations by Grice himself (1969): U meant something by

utteringx is true iff, for some audienceA, U utteredxintending:

(1)A to produce a particular response r

(2)A to think (recognize) that U intends (1)


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(3) A to fulfill (1) on the basis of his fulfillment of (2). (Grice

1969/1989, p. 92.)

Here are represented Grice's Conversational Maxims:

Maxim of Quantity:

1. Make your contribution to the conversation as informative as

necessary.

2. Do not make your contribution to the conversation more

informative than necessary.

Maxim of Quality:

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.

2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.Maxim of Relevance:

Be relevant (i.e., say things related to the current topic of the

conversation).

Maxim of Manner:

1. Avoid obscurity of expression.

2. Avoid ambiguity.

3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary wordiness).

4. Be orderly.

II.2.1. First Communicative Intentions

First, communicative intentions are intentions to produce some

response on the part of the addressee. The issue has been to define

what such a response should exactly be. It seems that what the

speaker usually intends by her communicative action is to change the

mental states of the addressee. But what change should it be for the

communicative intention to be successful? The intention of the

speaker when she says, for instance, It is raining could be to induce

the addressee to believe that it is raining or, maybe, to believe that


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the speaker believes that it is raining. But is any of these beliefs on

the part of the addressee necessary for the communicative action to

be successful qua communicative action? The most common answer

has been negative.

Perlocutionary aspects of that sort have been excluded from the

content of communicative intentions. It seems that the addressees

only new mental state needed is his recognition of the speakers

communicative intention; his understanding of the speakers

utterance. This is what has been called illocutionary uptake: In the

case of illocutionary acts we succeed in doing what we are trying to do

by getting our audience to recognize what we are trying to do. But theeffect on the hearer is not a belief or a response; it consists simply in

the hearer understanding the utterance of the speaker. (Searle 1969,

p.47)

II.2.2. Second Communicative Intentions

Second, communicative intentions have to be wholly overt:

The understanding of the force of an utterance in all cases involves

recognizing what may be called broadly an audience-directed

intention

and recognizing it as wholly overt, as intended to be recognized.

(Strawson 1964, p. 459) The exact formulation of this overt nature of

communicative intentions has been a subject of hot debate, some

arguing for a reflexive (self-referential) definition, others for a

potentially infinite but practically finite number of clauses in the

definition, with conceptual, logical or psychological arguments. What

seems to be a matter of consensus is that every covert or even

neutral (with respect to its intended recognition by the addressee)

aspect of the speakers intention is left out of the definition of


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communicative intentions. One way of summing this up is, finally, to

say that the fulfillment of communicative intentions consists precisely

in being recognized by the addressee. Much of the work in current

Pragmatics views linguistic understanding as the process of

recognition of the speakers communicative intentions. The addressee

relies on linguistic and extra linguistic information for reaching that

recognition. The ulterior

perlocutionary effects on the audience, intended or not intended by

the speaker, are usually ignored by pragmatic studies. This is where

Rhetoric can make its contribution. Persuasive as well as convincing

and other kinds of perlocutionary intentions seem to constitute thebasis of rhetorical studies of linguistic use.

II.3. Intentions in Communication in Political Blogs

Why political blogs, some might ask? Well I consider them to be

the most suitable example, that people write things not of the best

quality, sometimes in a large quantity and not of the best relevance.

Most bloggers wish to maximize their readership, but face very

substantial difficulties in gaining new readers. We argue that bloggers

and readers face an important coordination problem, which may be

analyzed as a pure coordination game. The problem is as follows.

Given the vast number of blogs even in the political subsection of the

blogosphere, it is extraordinarily hard for them to attract readers,

even when they have something interesting and unique to offer. Blog

readers, for their part, have an interest in finding interesting blog

posts. However, given search costs and limited time, it is near

impossible for readers to sift through the vast amounts of available

material in order to find the interesting posts.


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A political blog is a common type of blog that comments on

politics. In liberal democracies the right to criticize the government

without interference is considered an important element of free

speech. In other jurisdictions bloggers use the uncensored nature of

the internet to bypass state controlled news media but as a result may

find themselves persecuted. Political blogs often have a clearly stated

political bias. Although mainstream medianews is often presented as

impartial, bloggers believe that it does in many cases have a hidden

political agenda. This assertion is supported by the propaganda

model. Stating political bias at the outset is therefore seen as being

more honest. On the other hand, blogs are often seen as being tooanonymous and lacking in factual reliability to be trustworthy.

However, they can serve as a soapbox for opinions not represented in

mainstream media.

The increasing popularity of political blogs by independent

commentators has led to their adoption by media companies,

politicians and other organizations hoping to be seen to be more

accountable to their audiences, but these are often not considered

"proper" blogs by the blogging community.

Blogs with large numbers of incoming links offer both a means

of filtering interesting blog posts from less interesting ones, and a

focal point at which bloggers with interesting posts, and potential

readers of these posts can coordinate 60. When less prominent

bloggers have an interesting piece of information or point of view that

is relevant to a political controversy, they will usually post this on their

own blogs. However, they will also often have an incentive to contact

one of the large focal point blogs, to publicize their post. The latter

may post on the issue with a hyperlink back to the original blog, if the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speechhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speechhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internethttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_mediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecutionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_mediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impartialityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_agendahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honestyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustworthyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapboxhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentatorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicianhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountabilityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speechhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speechhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internethttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_mediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecutionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biashttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_mediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impartialityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_agendahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honestyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustworthyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapboxhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentatorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicianhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountabilityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience


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story or point of view is interesting enough, so that the originator of

the piece of information receives more readers.

The blogger, by virtue of simply writing down whatever is on his

mind, will be confronted with his own thoughts and opinions. Blogging

every day, he will become a more confident writer. A community of

100 or 20 or 3 people may spring up around the public record of his

thoughts. Being met with friendly voices, he may gain more

confidence in his view of the world; he may begin to experiment with

longer forms of writing, to play with haiku, or to begin a creative

project--one that he would have dismissed as being inconsequential or

doubted he could complete only a few months before. As heenunciates his opinions daily, this new awareness of his inner life may

develop into a trust in his own perspective. His own reactions--to a

poem, to other people, and, yes, to the media--will carry more weight

with him. Accustomed to expressing his thoughts on his website, he

will be able to more fully articulate his opinions to himself and others.

He will become impatient with waiting to see what others think before

he decides, and will begin to act in accordance with his inner voice

instead. Ideally, he will become less reflexive and more reflective, and

find his own opinions and ideas worthy of serious consideration.

His readers will remember an incident from their own childhood

when the blogger relates a memory. They might look more closely at

the other riders on the train after the blogger describes his

impressions of a fellow commuter. They will click back and forth

between blogs and analyze each blogger's point of view in a multi-blog conversation, and form their own conclusions on the matter at

hand. Reading the views of other ordinary people, they will readily

question and evaluate what is being said. Doing this, they may begin

a similar journey of self-discovery and intellectual self-reliance.


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II.4. Be careful what you say!

According to Nate Anderson when we think about starting a blog

we need to be very careful and prepared all the time to take charge

for our words. He therefore organized six principles one has to follow:

1. "We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we

allow on our blog."

2. "We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person."

3. "We connect privately before we respond publicly."

4. "When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take

action."

5. "We require commenter to supply a valid e-mail address before

they can post."

6. "we ignore the trolls."(Nate Anderson, April 09, 2007 - 11:51AM CT

Blogger Code of Conduct: the tyranny of good intentions http://

arstechnica.co/news.ars/post/20070409-prohibition-and-candelight-

marches-a-code-of-conduct-for bloggers.html)

According to the first principle blog owners will do more than

require "accountability"; they will enforce civility by deleting posts.

Candidates for deletion include any posts that abuse or threaten

others, contain knowingly false information or ad hominem attacks,

posts that "misrepresent" another person, anything that infringes

upon copyright or violates confidentiality or the privacy of others. This

wide-ranging list does not go over well with some critics of the plan,

who also are uneasy about the fact that the rules can change at anytime. We give a definition and determine what is 'unacceptable

content' on a case-by-case basis. Deleting posts is supposed to come

with an explanation of why the material was removed, but this is still

an incredibly wide-ranging list of things to police. "Misrepresenting"
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070409-prohibition-and-candelight-marches-a-code-of-conduct-for-bloggers.htmlhttp://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070409-prohibition-and-candelight-marches-a-code-of-conduct-for-bloggers.html


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someone else's position, in particular, is a tough one to handle; who

decides whether a position is being misrepresented? The burden of

enforcing this falls on the site moderators, who are put in the

unenviable position of having to understand exactly what it is that

every poster meant by his or her post, and then deciding if summaries

or responses to that post got it wrong. This seems impractical, to put

it mildly. Tightening up the definition to include "willful

misrepresentation" might make things easier, except that it would

then require moderators to make judgments about what particular

posters intended; in essence, psychic moderators would be required,

and anyone who has tried to hire a psychic moderator recently knowsthat the market for them is tight. Ad hominem attacks, easier in

theory to find and remove, in practice pose plenty of thorny problems.

We need look no further than our own forums to see the endless

argument over what does and does not constitute an illegitimate

attack on another person.

The second principle deals with the power to speak white. The

nature of online communities makes it easy to lash out in anger,

sarcasm, or abuse, forgetting that a real person is at the other end of

a distant IP address. Of course, plenty of people would(and do) make

abusive comments to others in person, so this rule might be of limited

utility, but it seems like a good place to start for most posters.

In the third case we must realize that not all events, that affect

other people too, are meant to be public. So whenever a problem

arises, the two people involved should make contact through some

other means before hashing out the issue on public message boards.

This is supposed to happen whenever "we encounter conflicts and

misrepresentation in the blogosphere," which is fine, except that

conflict (in the form of argument and debate) is often the reason that


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people visit blogs. Perhaps this principle works best when applied to

the interpersonal rivalries or dislikes that crop up in every community;

when it comes to ideas, though, the entire point is to hash out

arguments in the open, whether they are about politics or the best

audio card to buy for your basement recording studio.

The fourth principle is more like a call to action. This isn't a call

to vigilante justice, but an appeal to bloggers to stand up against

offensive postings. When someone makes an asinine, offensive, or

abusive post on a blog, the code asks other bloggers to contact that

person, point out the fault, and ask them to make amends publicly.

Comments that could be construed as a threat will be turned over tothe police for action.

In the case of the fifth, no anonymous comments are allowed.

We cant launch gossip and pretend we did not do it. We ought to

stand and face life as it is, and not misinform the readers.

The last but not least principle is that of spotting when someone

is misleading, trolling us. Again, in practice, this can be very difficult,

and can often lead to charges of "trolling" when controversial opinions

are posted. In general, though, it's a solid principle.

We must be clear if we want the message transmited to be well

interpreted, the reader to get the idea, and we mustnt be fake. Since

we had the courage to initiate something, initiate something worth

spending time. Some might say they can survive without blogs. I

totally agree, but why not try and see?


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CHAPTER III

WHY BLOG?

CHAPTER III

III.1. Why Blog?

This chapter is meant to convince to try for once and only after

that point your disapprovals. Indeed there are disadvantages to

blogging, and I have already encountered them, but if we stop at

every small detail then why do anything?


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When I start a post I have no idea where I'm heading. I love that

freedom. Blog writing is like going off for a walk with no

predetermined finish time or route, sometimes the walk is through the

fields, sometimes along the streets. There are moments we need to be

fully aware of the passing of life, a life one builds and maintains using

conversations and relationships with other people.

Another reason for blogging is to participate in the creation of a

world which, as Dr. Weinberger put it in World of Ends, nobody owns,

everybody can use, and anybody can improve.

Since my blog is so new people have been asking me what its

about and why I do it. I dont have yet a certain theme for my blog. Iam not so focused, probably because Im passionate about too many

things. Blogs should show personality. If I connect with someone

through their blog or anything else they do, I may not want to hear

about their new car acquisition, but I might be interested in hearing

about their trip to the mountain, their joys and pains and their

thoughts on spirituality. I dont quiet manage to write daily because I

work a lot on my dissertation paper which I have mentioned there.

One of the things Ive noticed since I started this blog is how much

more attention I pay to the details, whether its something someone

says or a painting and its vibrant colors. I want to write about things

that make us feel human. For me, its the humanity I see in a blog

that keeps me coming back for more.

Where do we draw the line? How much of our personal side

should we show on our blogs? Despite the fact that the role of the

blog has changed over time and will continue to morph as their value

unfolds, Im not sure the feeling that creating a blog post invokes for

so many of us will change. What Im sure of is that I would like to

create a blog that would recreate a warm and inviting atmosphere,
http://worldofends.com/http://worldofends.com/


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like that I used to live in the house of my grandparents during

evenings or holydays when they would gather all nephews tell stories

and relive their lives.

III.2. Advantges and Disadvantages of a Blog over a Website

Advantages are numerous and above all is the freedom of

speech which allows one to make friends online and share knowledge

with them.

You don't have to mess with an HTML layout. You just post your info

and the info looks wonderful because the Blog uses the template that

you set up. You can post as often as you like. I can't imagine that Iwould send an email to my zone every day but with a Blog you can

post as much as you would like. You have unlimited access and can

make as many blogs as you like on any subject. There are a lot of

spams, but email spam filters do not block blogs because they are not

an email communication.

According to Gerry McGovern, from an organizationalperspective the advantages include the following:

-The consumer and citizen are potentially better informed and this can

only be good for the long-term health of our societies and economies.

-Blogs have potential to help the organization develop stronger

relationships and brand loyalty with its customers, as they interact

with the human face of the organization through blogs.

-Blogs, in an intranet environment, can be an excellent way of sharing

knowledge within the organization.

-Blogs can be a positive way of getting feedback, and keeping your

finger on the pulse, as readers react to certain pieces, suggest story

ideas, etc. -Blogs can build the profile of the writer, showcasing the

organization as having talent and expertise.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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best for you. After having done this determine your purpose. Weblogs

are used to filter information, organize businesses, share family news,

establish professional reputations, foment social change, and muse

about the meaning of life. Knowing what you hope to accomplish with

your weblog will allow you to begin in a more focused way.

Try and establish an intended audience. You conduct yourself

differently with your friends than you do with professional associates,

strangers, customers, or your grandmother. Knowing for whom you

are writing will allow you to adopt an appropriate tone.

You must remember to be real. Even a professional weblog can

be engaging. Speak in a real voice about real things. Write about whatyou love. A weblog is the place for strong opinions, whether about

politics, music, social issues, gardening, or your profession. The more

engaged you are with your subject, the more interesting your writing

will be. If you want results, update frequently. Interested readers will

return to your site if there is likely to be something new. You needn't

update every day, but try to post several times a week.

Do not forget to be truthful, respectful to your audience and to

your fellow bloggers. Establish your credibility. Understand that on the

Internet, your words may live forever, whether they are self-published

or archived on another site. In the Weblog Handbook, I propose a set

ofWeblog Ethics; think about your own standards, and then adhere to

them.

We have to link to our sources and to other weblogs. The Web

allows a transparency that no other medium can duplicate. When you

link to a news story, an essay, a government document, a speech, or

another blogger's entry, you allow your readers access to your

primary material, empowering them to make informed judgements.

Your readers may enjoy being introduced to the weblogs you most
http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.htmlhttp://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html


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enjoy reading. The Web is a democratic medium and bloggers amplify

each other's voices when they link to each other. Generously linking

to other weblogs enlarges the grassroots network of information

sharing and social alliances we are creating together on the Web.

Whether your blog is a hobby or a professional tool, it will be

more rewarding for you if you allow yourself to experiment a little.

Even if most blog audiences are small at the beginning, with time and

regular updates your audience will grow. You may never have more

than a few hundred readers, but the people who return to your site

regularly will come because they are interested in what you have to

say.


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GLOSSARY OF TERMS RELATED TO BLOGS


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Glossary of Terms Related to Blogs:

A

Artlog is a form of art sharing and publishing in the format of a

blog, but differentiated by the predominant use of and focus on Art

work rather than text.

Audioblog blogging method by which the author does not

create posts in text but (generally) in the audio MPEG-3 format and

makes them available to download from website.

Audioblogging started gaining popularity recently in 2003.

Most bloggersuse this as a platform to spread their self-created music

or more obscure (indie, non-mainstream) music in addition to their

posts which are read out loud like radio broadcasts.

Autocasting automated method ofpodcasting that allows both

bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions.

BBlam used to describe blogs that are nothing but advertising or

marketing often generated mechanically.

Blawg used for blogs relating to justice and laws.


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Bleg blog post consisting of a request or appeal to readers.

Colloquial term derived from the words blog and beg.

Blog to edit (or update) or add new material to a weblog.

*A shorter version of the word weblog, which was popularized by

Peter Merholzwhen he split the original term into the phrase we blog

on his own weblog.

Blog Client is software to manage blog(s) from operating

system without need to launch web browser software. A typical blog

clienthas more features than an online editor, such as spell-checkers

and more options for advanced content creation and editing.

BlogDay August 31st special event. On BlogDay every year,

bloggers from all over the world post a recommendation of 5 new

blogs, preferably, blogs different from their own culture, point of view

and attitude. Most bloggers use BlogDay to explore other bloggers

blogrolls.

Blog Feed XML-based file for a blog which allows it to be read

in another format. The XML-based file in which the blog hosting

software places a machine-readable version of the blog so that it may

be "syndicated" for further distribution on the web. Formats such as

RSS and Atom are used to structure the XML file.

Blog Hopping means to follow the links from one blogroll or

blog entry to another.

Blogger-person who authors and updates a weblog- created by

Pyra Labs, is a service that provides Web-based tools used by

individuals to publish weblogs on the World Wide Web.


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Blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all weblogs

or blogs, referring to them as a community or a social network.

Weblogs are interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them,

reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each

others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown

their own culture.

Blogroll represents a collection of links to other weblogs.

Blogrolls are often found on the front page sidebar of most weblogs.

Blogsnob someone who refuses to respond to comments on

their blog from those outside their circle of friends.

Blogstorm used to describe a large amount of activity,

information and opinion erupting around a particular subject in the

blogosphere.

Blogstream the alternative news and information network

growing up around weblogs and user-driven content mechanisms. In a

nutshell, it is a play on the term mainstream, and describes the

alternative network of blogs delivering news and information instead

of other more established channels.

Body represents the main body containing weblog post

contents.

C

Citation represents the recognition or quotation from another

blogor blogger.

Comment text note left on a post to indicate readers feelings

and thoughts.
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Blog&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Blog&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1


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Comment Spam flooding a blog with advertising comments. It

is a serious problem that requires banning tools or password

protection for blogs.

D

DarkBlog is a non-public blog, generally password-protected or

behind a firewall.

F

Flog a fake blog or more suitable a combination of fake and

blog.

G

Glog text logs.

I

Internet represents the network of all networks; the medium

through which blogs derive their existence.

L

Links see Blogroll.

M

Merholz, Peter was person who is credited with starting up the

first blogin history.

Milblog is a blog authored by members of the armed forces. It

is derived from the combination of military and blog.

Moblog is a blog authored on the move, generally through

mobile phones.

Movable Type - popular blog editing program. See also

WordPress


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Multi-blog represents the act to create and maintain two or

more blogs simultaneously.

Multi-blogger is anindividual or organization that creates and

maintains two or more blogs simultaneously.

P

Permalinkis a permanent link to the URL of a single post.

Photoblog represents the blog whose content is mainly of

photos.

Ping alert in the TrackBack system that notfifies original authorwhen someone else writes an entry concerning the original post.

Podcast posting audio and video material on a blogs RSS feed

for readers to download and listen to. This is a break from traditional

text methods of supplying information podcasts are gaining

popularity as an alternative to the text-and-jpg method of blogging.

Post the unit of measurement for blog content.

Q

Quatrain is a style of writing. It is derived from the poetic

device quatrain, and hence denotes an extremely irritating style of

writing by which every other word rhymes and each line contains a set

number of syllables.

R

RSS Really Simple Syndication It represents alternative means

of accessing the vast amount of information available on the internet.

Instead of browsing the websites directly, information is sent to the

user instead.


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RSS Aggregator software or online service allowing a blogger

to acces and read an RSS feed.

RSS Feed file containing a blogs latest posts and updates.

Read by an RSSaggregator and shows when a blog has been updated.

S

Sketchblogisa site containing a portfolio of sketches.

Shocklog is the blog designed to engineer rumours and

discussion by posting various shocking content i.e. porn, violence,

etc.

Splog blog composed entirely of spam, or which has no written

value.

T

Tumblelogs are blogs with shorter posts and mixed media

types.

Trackback means whereby different weblogs/websites can

notify each other to inform each other of citations and/or related

resources. Trackback is a system implemented by MovableType and

later adopted by other blogging tools, which allows a blogger to see

who has seen the original material and created a separate article

concerning it.

Troll blogcommenter whose sole purpose is to attack the views

expressed on the blog. Verbosity ranges from eloquent to outright

vulgar.

V

VlogA blog comprising videos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchbloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbleloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchbloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbleloghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlog


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Vorage representsthe act of foraging for video on the internet

and sharing it with others. It is derived from the words forage and

video.

W

Weblog online publication with regular posts and updates

WordPress is a popular blog editing tool. See also Movable

Type.

X

Xanga blogging service. See also Blogger.

XMLExtensible Markup Language it is used for information

exchange.

Conclusion


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This paper was meant to bring the nowadays wide spread term

blog closer to those who have heard of it vaguely and havent quiet

decided whether to appel to it or not.

As I already mentioned it is something we can indeed live

without, but are people so lazy and unopened to new? I dont think so.

I, myself did not know almost anything about this phenomenon,

because it has become a phenomenon, until late last year. I have

heard it mentioned but it skipped my interest. What arouse my

interest was that everybody started to mention blog more and more.

You can hear about blog on any channel you watch. I even counted in

one day with approximation around 96 times the word beingmentioned.

I started my blog, which I called hotmihroz and which you can

visit at (http://www.hotmihroz.blogspot.com/), but I havent quiet

decided yet on a certain theme for it. I dont manage to post daily that

is why it is not known only by very close friends. In the mere future I

hope Ill have the time and take the bull by the horns.

I would like to end this paper with these two quotes and hope I

managed to put blogs in your agenda, as things I want to do next.

Bloggers are people with attitude. They say there's a book

inside everybody. Well, the Web and blogs have let the book

out!(Gerry McGovern, Blogs and blogging: advantages and

disadvantages August 23, 2004,

http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_08_23_

blogging.htm)

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by

a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, o

the phenomenon called blog

Documents