Summary:

Beginning in week 3, you will write a total of three blog entries per week. The entries are divided as follows:

--One entry of no less than 250 words must respond, using paraphrase or quotation, to an assigned reading;

--One entry of no less than 250 words must comment on a global topic.

--One entry of any length, on any subject, or in response to other blogs you find and subscribe to, including those of fellow students.

NOTE: You must include at least one active link to some item on the Internet each week. If you feel uncomfortable publishing your work online, you may approach your instructor and ask to maintain a notebook journal that follows the same requirements, excluding hyperlinking.

We don't want to restrict your content and coverage too much, but anything inappropriate (flaming comments, pornography, or other questionable content ) will not be tolerated. Please understand that we do not want you to blog a diary. Our goal is not to encourage the sort of confessional writing that may embarrass you five years from now. Instead, we want you to use the blog as a public writing space--a space where you develop your ideas, respond to the ideas of others in the class, and publish quality writing.

Tip: You get what you give! In order to become a member of a blogging community, you must read the blogs of other community bloggers and respond to their blogs. Over time, this will attract readers to your site. More importantly, you will create your own community, your own “invisible college”—a place of learning without walls.

More About Blogs

The term "blog" is shorthand for "Weblog" or Web Log.  Weblogs have been defined by Jill Walker in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (forthcoming in 2005) as “frequently updated websites consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first.”

Rebecca Blood, author of The Weblog Handbook, traces this term back to 1997 when Jorn Barger began keeping a list of "other sites like his" (Weblog History), a list that was subsequently published in Camworld.  The “blogosphere,” a related term, was coined by William Quick in 2000 to refer to “the totality of weblogs.” 

While blogs may have been scarce in the late 1990s, they are now extremely common, representing a growing and evolving new genre of communication. By October 2003, there were approximately 4.1 million blogs created on the Internet with 1.4 million blogs remaining active. 

Bloggers use blogging software, which is easy to use, requiring little in the way of computer knowledge or html. Whether one uses a downloadable open source program like Movable Type or Live Journal, or registers for a blog at a free hosting site such as WritingBlogs or Blogger, a blog can be set up in five minutes or less.  Bloggers can then access their blog from any computer with Internet access, allowing them to post anytime, anywhere. 

Because posts are listed sequentially, from most recent to past, blogging software offers calendaring tools at the homepage for each blog, enabling readers to click on the specific date or month they want to read.  Readers can typically hyperlink to other Web sites.  Some blogs allow users to categorize specific blog posts. In other words, users can define categories of information they tend to write about, such as news, family and friends, hobbies, sports, politics, or religion.  Then, when they write an individual post that relates to a category, they associate that post with the category.  By linking content to categories, readers can skim through past blogs, filtering their reading by viewing only the posts in categories that interest them. 

Over the years, as writers have experimented with the genre, and as software developers have created new software to publish and archive blogs, the genre of blogging has evolved. Blogging has morphed into new genres including photoblogs, which typically include photographs with commentary; videoblogs, which synthesize video with commentary; fiction blogs, where users author fiction; and mo’blogging (mobile blogging), which includes pictures, video & text posted from a camera phone directed instantly to the web. 

Why Write a Blog?

Unlike the personal journal where the primary audience tends to be the author, blogs enable writers to reach a public audience. Reflecting on personal experience, arguing political positions, collaborating with peers—these are just a few of the reasons for blogging. 

The best way to sense the remarkable flexibility and power of this new writing genre is to sample a variety of blogs.  For example, check out Dave Barry’s blog to see how a well-regarded humor columnist extends his readership.  Or check out Noam Chomsky’s blog which includes commentaries on current events for the purpose of intellectual debate. Also, see how other college writers have used WritingBlogs to collaborate, critique texts or reflect on experiences.

Why Blog?

• Find readers for your work
• Encourage daily writing, which can stimulate your creativity
• Improve your writing by writing regularly
• Have a creative, open space to write to an audience
• Reflect on and organize on your own writing, research, and career goals
• Organize/extend your responses to other texts (Web sites, magazines, books)
• Receive responses to your ideas and writing
• Read blogs by other students, faculty, and professional writers 
• Share your reflections and insights
• Offer a place for other students to respond to your work
• Create a dialogue about texts 
• Archive URLs, readings, and online resources
• Experiment with a new genre of communication
• Become comfortable writing online, using links, images, and talk-back features
• Collaborate on projects
• Receive responses to your ideas and writing

Diverse Rhetorical Situations

As illustrated by the table below, people blog for any number of reasons. For some, blogging is an extension of journalism that comments on local or national news and events.  Bloggers can use their blogs to take a political position on those events. For others, blogging offers a community forum to explore issues and research matters.  Some bloggers believe blogging is a deeply personal process that facilitates self-development.  Blogging can emulate the newsfeed, the give and take format of a discussion forum, or the rantings of a self-obsessed egomaniac.

To witness the diversity of blogging first hand, check out websites that index blogs by titles, topic, or location, such as Globe of Blogs.com. 

Rhetorical Analysis of Online Readings

Consider the context, audience, purpose, and media invoked by the following readings.  What do these sample blogs tell you about the people who write blogs or the people who read and comment on other people’s blogs?

1.   WritingBlogs, which hosts more than 3,000 blogs by college students is a “creative community for college students enrolled in writing courses and for people who are passionate about exploring their own creative processes.”

2.    Slashdot, a weblog which indexes and summarizes interesting Web sites and describes itself as “News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.”

3.   BlogforAmerica, the official weblog of Howard Dean’s 2004 Presidential campaign.  While the Vermont Governor did not win the Democratic nomination, his blog is still active and the source of news for his latest grassroots endeavor, Democracy for America. Dean’s blog attracted a lot of attention for involving young voters in the political process.

4.   Jay Rosen, NYU Journalism professor and writer of the blog, Press Think: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine, describes himself as “a press critic, an observer of journalism's habits, and also a writer trying to make sense of the world.”

5.   Scripting News, the personal weblog maintained by Dave Winer, who created Weblogs.com, a web application that continually lists the weblogs that have changed in the last three hours.  Winer also developed the support site and home page for weblogs hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, the host of BloggerCon, a conference “celebrating the art and science of weblogs.”

6.   The Revealer, “a daily review of religion and the press.”

Analysis of Key Features

While the genre of blogs remains in a state of flux, blogs tend to share the following characteristics:

1. Because blogs tend to bury past entries in archives, blogs tend to emphasize the present. Blogging isn't the best rhetoric for sustained discourse but blogs are rather ideal for daily insights, brief abstracts, and annotations. While most blogs are brief, some blogs are extensive, even essay length.
    
2. Bloggers enjoy linking to and describing other blogs (or Web sites or wikis). In this way, according to some popular culture pundits, blogs challenge traditional mass media. If people are getting their information and analyses from other people's sites, then they don't need an editor from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal to update them on events or tell them what to think about a subject.
    
3. Popular blogs (as measured, perhaps, by the number of readers that frequent them each day) tend to be updated daily. In addition to writing their weekly columns, some journalists are using blogs to build stronger relationships with their readers and extend their thoughts on timely issues.
    
4. Most blogs are monological--i.e., they reflect one person's thoughts and emotions. Yet, as blogging software becomes more sophisticated, some blogs are adopting more of an interactive, dialogical approach. Blogging software may allow readers to discuss one particular blog or to add comments inside the actual blog stream. In this way, blogs are more like discussion forums or e-lists, fostering public discourse.  In addition, by sharing a common password and logon, some blog spaces are used to foster collaboration. Multiple users may share one blogging account.
    
5. Blogs often contain a blog roll–a listing of hyperlinks to other blogs of interest. By listing one another bloggers create a “blog ring” --a community of bloggers with shared interests. Being listed in an A- List blog roll can mean the difference between anonymity and success--i.e., between writing for oneself or writing to thousands, perhaps millions of readers.

Focus

How do bloggers focus their blog?

Like any other writing project, identify your audience, purpose, voice, and context you can help identify the blogging topics that are likely to interest your readers.

Many people find it useful to maintain multiple blogs to reach different audiences and purposes.  For example, at WritingBlogs you could blog for a writing course and at Blogger you could blog about world events.

Another way to create focus is by ensuring that the blog’s title is specific and not vague or general. Another way is by providing a short summary of the blog’s theme somewhere on the front page. For example, Kairosnews describes itself as a “Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.” Professor of Law at Stanford Law School’s Lawrence Lessig focuses his blog on issues surrounding intellectual property laws; this is made clear by the titles of the row of books across the front of his blog and the list of related links on the left side.

Bloggers should take pains to title not only their blog but each post. They should also use category or taxonomic features to organize their work. As mentioned above, most blogging software allows bloggers to select a series of categories by which they can describe the focus of each blog post. For example, Kairosnews bloggers can select several categories, such as “Pedagogy,” “Politics,” “New Technologies,” or “Visual Rhetoric” to describe their blog. Later, readers can see all blog posts which are focused on a certain topic. Bloggers at WritingBlogs can create their own categories and edit them as their thoughts evolve.

Development

A good weblog is like a puzzle: You cannot measure its quality by judging an individual puzzle piece. Instead, as each piece gets placed, a picture emerges. In other words, blogs gain power over time, showing how the writer’s (or writers’) mind (or minds) works. Over time, bloggers become known for being informative about a topic or set of topics. Bloggers attract readers by researching their topics, by providing evidence for assertions, and by creating a tone and persona that readers find informative or entertaining.

Successful bloggers gauge their success by reviewing who reads their blogs and how the blog space can be used to foster ideas. How do you get readers interested in your blog? The key is sound development. The best bloggers don’t write “off the cuff.” Instead they carefully craft their blog posts and provide plenty of details, information, examples, and links to other resources. Even a blog about a trip to the grocery store can be interesting if the blogger describes interesting characters or provides insightful remarks about products or advertising encountered during the trip. Good bloggers are able to think critically about their experiences and captivate people with thoughtful perspectives on even the most recondite or supposedly banal subject matter.

In general, blogs are characterized by a strong, personal voice.  Bloggers adopt a first-person point of view and their subject matter varies according to their interests, perhaps including politics, technology, sports, or lifestyles.

Just because authors write from the first-person perspective does not mean that they are not working to entertain or interest an audience.  Blogs that are successful attract readers and comments.  Successful bloggers post interesting, well-written texts on a regular basis. 

However, not all bloggers emote about personal events or use the first-person. Some businesses, for example, use blogs for employees to communicate with one another. In professional contexts or in group blogs, the use of the first-person may be shunned.

Organization

Blogging software helps writers organize their work by storing content in a database and allowing access to that database via calendaring tools, blog rolls, stories, categories, and so on. Below is a discussion of common blogging features.

Emphasis on the Present > Archives

No matter what blogging software you use, one striking feature of blogging is the emphasis on chronological order. Individual posts are ordered by date and time, and they are viewable by a calendar or a list of months. In this way, the rhetoric of the blog underscores the present moment.

The Blog Roll

The “Blog Roll” refers to the list oflinks to blogs that the blog author reads.  Being listed on the blog roll of a popular blogger can bring thousands of readers to your site.  Readers will examine your blog roll to gauge your interests and how well read you are.  At WritingBlog, adding links is made simple through the Administration function in WritingBlogs

Source: http://writingblog.org/doctordaisy

Blogging Categories/Topics

Bloggers can associate individual posts with one or more topics. There after, readers can “filter” their reading of the author’s blog by reading posts on certain topics that interest them.

In this example (see left column) the categories show the blogger is posting blogs on categories that are likely to interest other readers.

In group blog situations, some people use the category/topic tool to identify particular bloggers; in this way an instructor, for example, could view individual student’s blogs. As an example, see http://writingblog.org/endymion2/

Source: http://writingblog.org/doctordaisy

View Stories

Some blogs enable users to save “stories,” which can be texts that enable other users to comment on the texts.

At WritingBlogs, you can use “stories” to enable readers to comment on a particular text.  Just as you can categorize a blog post, you can categorize your stories.  For example, you could create a category called “Environmental Issues” and then associate environmental stories with this category.  Then when the user selects “Environmental Perspectives” under strong categories, the user would see a list of links to all of your e-stories.

What distinguishes blogs from others genres of writing is the use of the personal voice. Of course, not all bloggers spill their guts. Blogging in journalism, for example, or presidential politics, can be just as formal as a thesis or dissertation. Yet a surprising number of people publish those blogs to the world that convey information they might otherwise be embarrassed to tell their friends, parents, or children. The problem with this approach is that a blog’s content can be archived at The Internet Archive or the content could be used to profile you by marketing companies--or worse.

Experimenting with the personal voice can have very positive consequences. Some people have forgotten or never learned how to let words flow. They tend to edit themselves so much they don’t allow themselves to think. Personal writing can be persuasive and informative so it would be unwise to proclaim that blogs should not be personal writing spaces. Writing from the personal voice can stimulate creativity. However, remember that blogs are public writing spaces. Think before you publish. Don’t publish anything that will embarrass you tomorrow, next week, or in 20 years.

Blogs that attract readers are well written. They play with humor and provide insight, rich content, and surprises. Effective bloggers carefully consider what they write; innane lines like, “I’m heading to the store now and need to buy milk” do not attract readers.

Carefully revise and edit your work so that your readers will return to your blog. Ideally, readers will enjoy your blog and they will return to it regularly and list your blog in their blog roll.

Readings

A Blog About Writing Blogs
Steven Levy, a Newsweek reporter, blogs on writing blogs.

EVHead
Evan Williams started the Blogger movement along with Meg Hourihan, and his site is worth watching as a preview of what's to come in the world of blogging.

Jason Kottke's Blog
Jason Kottke has been maintaining this daily blog since 1988. His site includes a Web cam, FAQs, and a search engine.

Dave Barry's Blog

The off-beat Miami Herald columnist keeps a daily blog of his oddball musings.

Library Weblogs
Updated list of library-related weblogs.

Megnut
Meg Hourihan created Blogger along with Evan Williams. Meg's site contains links to her monthly columns.

Tal G in Jerusalem
Interesting blog addressing the author’s perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Writing from Jerusalem, this blog gives a personal account of an Israeli's perspective, yet he includes some links addressing Arab perspectives.

North Korea Zone

A weblog maintained by former CNN correspondent Rebecca MacKinnon who describes her blog as “an interactive site that helps you stay informed and also helps you share what YOU know about North Korea with other people around the world.”

 Mama Musings

“Elizabeth Lane Lawley’s thoughts on technology, academia, family and tangential topics.”

Lord of the Blog

No longer an active blog, this was used in an ENC 1101 class. It contains several topics, links to other blogs in the classroom and includes lots of feedback from other students.

Warren&Me

The author has a unique mixture of entries. Most of the blog takes the form a journal, but also includes fragments of what appears to be a story.