Elmine Wijnia: "Understanding blogs: a communicative perspective"

Check out her blog, Communigations:

Disagree with Mark

need to continue to research “what” is the medium Objections
just sites -one sided -just hype Question - To what extent is comunication possible through blogs? -use Habermas’s qualitiative good communicative PLUS -VanDijk’s aspects from blgos that influence communication Habermas
for good comms need communicative symmetry between participants and ideal speech situation Ideal Speech situation -equal access to all -no lies, act truthfully -no power differences Can blogs offer a platform for the “ideal speech situation” -integration of consulation, registration and conversation = blog as a new medium Communication through blogs
two or more sided
asynchronous -low selectivity (disseminating to everybody) -low interactivity (compare to chat where interactivity is high) -stimulus richness is high (potential from videos, etc.) -information complexity is high Relating the above to ideal speech
low selectivity makes dialogue possible (+) -possibility to interact with everybody on Internet not just bloggers (+) -No power differences – all power with blogger (can distort by deleting comments or deleting posts or changing them) – yet there is no power difference between bloggers -Acting truthfully –context over time helps determine truthfulness –photos, videos, etc. can help Conclusions
blogs do offer a platform for ideal speech situation -use blogs as a hub to increase interactivity (i.e. display IM and other channels on blog so people can access them quicker!) which improves judgement truthfulness -dialogue leads to networking

Questions

Llila E - How to go beyond blogs as mere web publishing?

have more channels
moblogs will change this

Mark B - Why is the About page so hard to find and not more standardized?

people are afraid to expose themselves
people don’t realize the value of about pages

Phil Wolff - What are the prescriptive advice for tool makers like Ben and Mena Trott

better audio and video tools
european version of audblog
use the children tools like zoomblox