When most Fairfield students think of blogging, they associate it with Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and LiveJournal. However, this not-so-new phenomenon is in a category of its own.
Internet blogging has been around for some time, and professors at Fairfield are beginning to use blogs in the classroom. Nevertheless, many students are still unsure as to what a blog really is.
According to the popular blogging site, blogger.com: “A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.”
The site also tells its new users, “Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.”
These descriptions of what a blog is are still very vague. Communication Adjunct Professor Mirjana Dedaic gave a more lucid definition: “A blog is a new way to chat. Bloggers are people who want to discuss their thoughts and feelings with a number of others, mostly unknown people, who represent an imagined community.”
According to Dedaic, there are mainly two types of bloggers: bloggers who talk about issues and bloggers who talk about themselves.
Those who talk about issues invite people to share their opinions on the issue. For those who talk about themselves, a blog is a “personal choice and it fulfills a need that we all have, to communicate our thoughts and feelings.”
Laura Hefferan ’07 is using blogs in one of Dedaic’s interpersonal communication classes this semester.
“Our assignment is to choose any three blogs and to follow them throughout the semester,” she said.
“As [they] learn about concepts and theories in interpersonal communication, the students actualize their knowledge by looking at the ways these theories and concepts are manifested in the selected blogs,” Dedaic said.
Though blogging may appear similar to Facebook and MySpace, Dedaic said it is a very different form of Internet communication.
“The community of users is created in a different way. The invitation direction is opposite. In the case of bloggers, they invite you into their world. Other sites … invite you to participate in some kind of ‘common project,'” she said.
Some students think that blogs are the same as online journals, but they are incorrect in this assumption.
Andrea Mangione ’07 said that she thinks a blog is “an online journal that people can put their opinion about anything in.”
“You can tell what a blog is and what a blog isn’t by the content. People write about their lives and issues they may be facing looking for feedback from the people reading their blogs,” Hefferan said.
Dedaic has a similar opinion.
“The concept of a journal is defined by the secrecy of the text. Journals are usually not public. Blogs are,” she said.
When reading blogs, it is important to remember that they are not always a reliable source.
Meaghan Donlon ’07 remembered when blogs first became popular.
“People thought they were really reliable, but [it] was really just Joe Schmo from Alabama making stuff in his basement,” she said.
Dedaic offers a warning to those who read blogs.
“Keep in mind that bloggers represent themselves in the way they want, which is never the full and only truth about them,” she said.
Communication on the Internet is changing due to blogs, according to Dedaic.
“It seems that many more topics are now conversationalized by the means of blogs, as well as other internet forums,” she said. “Only a few years ago nobody would have been able to predict such things as web-chat, blogging or podcasting.”
Dedaic is reluctant to predict how communication is changing on the Internet because it changes so fast but, according to her, “that is exactly what’s interesting and exciting about the Internet.”
Leave a Reply