Blogging

Jill Walker Rettberg is professor of digital culture at University of Bergen.

• Acknowledgements viiIntroduction 11 What is a Blog? 5A brief history of weblogs 6How blogs have adapted to a social media ecosystem 14Three blogs 17Defining blogs 302 From Bards to Blogs 36Orality and literacy 37The introduction of print 41Print, blogging and reading 44Printed precedents of blogs 45The Late Age of Print 47A modern public sphere? 50Hypertext and computer lib 53Technological determinism or cultural shaping of technology? 573 Blogs, Communities and Networks 62Social network theory 66Distributed conversations 69Technology for distributed communities 72Facebook and Twitter as microblogs 76Publicly articulated relationships 82Colliding networks 83Emerging social networks 864 Citizen Journalists? 90Bloggers’ perception of themselves 93When it matters whether a blogger is a journalist 94Objectivity, authority and credibility 97First-hand reports: blogging from a war zone 101First-hand reports: chance witnesses 104Bloggers as independent journalists and opinionists 107Gatewatching 108Symbiosis 1125 Blogs as Narratives 115Goal-oriented narratives 116Ongoing and episodic narration 118Blogs as self-exploration 127Fictions or hoaxes? Kaycee Nicole and lonelygirl15 1296 Blogging Brands 135The human voice 136Advertisements and sponsored posts on blogs 139Micropatronage 145Sponsored posts and pay-to-post 147Exploitation and alienation? 152Corporate blogs 155Engaging bloggers 161Corporate blogging gone wrong 1647 The Future of Blogging 169Implicit participation and the perils of personalized media 170References 176Blogs Mentioned 186Index 189

"A landmark in social cyberspace studies – and much more than that. It’s about the way today’s popular culture is actually part of large-scale change in the way culture is produced. Jill Walker Rettberg has written a deep and broad book about the real meaning of blogging as evidence for and a driver of an epochal cultural shift. She deftly uses her own experience as a renowned blogger, examined through the expert eye of an experienced communication researcher, to reveal the psychological, social, political and historical meaning of the blogging phenomenon. She brings media studies, ethnology, literary studies, marketing, journalism and sociology together into a brilliant explanatory framework."Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs "Blogging has become an essential backbone of social media. Jill Walker Rettberg’s book brilliantly documents, analyses and situates blogging, constructing an indispensable account of blogging’s history and future in light of social network sites, mobile practices and other media-sharing platforms. This is a key piece of scholarship for anyone trying to understand the intersection of technology and society."danah boyd, Microsoft Research New England, and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University "A solid, unbiased, and unfettered introduction to the social aspects of blogging. Recommended."Choice