Blogging by Ryan Dodge - Computer Collection of Essays from Scholarship 2006-Best Computer Online Store Houston Buy Discount Prices Texas-Directron.com

Ryan Dodge

Blogging
-By Ryan Dodge

Blogs range from personal journals of daily events to political propaganda and corporate advertising. Although many people view all blogs as mindless rants, blogging when used properly can be an effective tool for communication. The incorrect usage of a blog can result in a major lawsuit; in contrast, a well created blog can grab the attention of millions of viewers and be used for generating income or political interest.

It is difficult to mark the first blog, because blogging is such a broad field of journalism. However, the term blogging can be dated back roughly one decade. "In 1997, Jorn Barger coined the term 'weblog,' which later evolved to 'blog.' Though blogging seems to be innocent, it was not always this way. The first major controversy began with mistaken political comments in 1997; allegations of anti-Semitism arose surrounding Barger's comments, such as, 'Is Judiasm simply a religion of lawless racists?'" (Das). Although some sites existed before this that could be looked upon in hindsight as blogs, Barger's coining of the term marks the beginning of the blog era. Furthermore, the controversy of his comments would seemingly set the precedent for other blogs to come.

David Milum, upset with his lawyer Rafe Banks over the handling of his DUI charge, demanded his $3,000 be refunded. When Banks refused, Milum created the blog forum aboutforsyth.com, on which he accused Banks of delivering bribes to Judge Stan Gault, who passed away of a heart attack in 2003. His site has had almost 720,000 visitors since 2002, as well as almost 230 registered members. In his posting under the title "Friends of attorney Rafe Banks", Milum states "Gault was as dirty as they come." Milum did not stop with Banks and Gault, however. He went on to attack Banks' son in the thread titled "Attorney Rafe Banks Caught With Runaway In house?", where he states "Now retired Sheriff's Major Ernie Borne told me [three times] that they went to look for the boy at Cumming attorney Rafe Banks' house in the Polofields and found the boy in bed with Rafe's son having homosexual sex." Banks created a libel cases against Milum, which Gurr states "Milum who lost the case and was ordered to pay Cumming attorney Rafe Banks III $50,000 in compensatory damages after a Forsyth County Superior Court jury found that Milum had libeled Banks on his Web site, aboutforsyth.com. In several postings on the site, Milum accused Banks of delivering bribes for drug dealers to the late Superior Court Judge Stan Gault" (Gurr). According to the Media Law Resource Center, which keeps a directory of lawsuits against Bloggers, this is the first case where a blogger has "gone to trial and resulted in a liability verdict" (Robinson).

At the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a seemingly regular newspaper, the writers have a section dedicated to their online blogs. These blogs, however, are not just journal entries of their daily life, but articles on information that interests them. Brian Chin, a Senior Online Producer at the Seattle P-I references blogging lawsuits within his own blog. He states, "In the past two years, more than 50 lawsuits stemming from postings on blogs and website message boards have been filed across the nation" (Chin). He then goes on to describe how the impact of blogging on speech may end up changing libel law. He references the lawsuit by Rafe Banks in his reasoning for the lawsuits, in which he describes, "Recent lawsuits by Banks and others who say they have had their reputations harmed or their privacy violated have been aimed not just at cash awards but also at silencing their critics" (Chin).

Arguably the largest target of criticism in our country, even politicians have turned to blogging. Steve Pokin at stltoday.com writes in regard to political blogging "The world of blogs is cold, cruel and in-your-face. It's one where people comment, vent, rant, attack, and do so almost always anonymously. It's a world where politicians are idiots and crooks" (Pokin). Political blogs allow ordinary people as well as politicians to broadcast their opinions in order to spread their ideals. However, without any type of mediation, bloggers can be very aggressive towards others with opposing views. Pokin describes the aggressiveness of political blogging by saying "Rules? What rules? Political blogging is about as subtle as a kick in the crotch." Although their posts may not be moderated immediately, they can still have a negative backlash. Ted Furtado, an aide for New Hampshire congressman Charles Bass resigned recently after being caught posting misleading comments on political blogs. Charles Bass is a Republican Congressman, but according to CBS news, his aide imitated a Democrat on blogging forums who was doubtful of Paul Hodes' (the Democratic Candidate) chance of defeating him (cbs4boston.com). Furtado managed to get his message out to the right audience, but his failure to cover up his trickery may have damaged his career. However, reaching out to the wrong audience can also create a problem.

In another case, xanga.com was fined over $1 million for allowing users under the age of 13 to disclose personal information without parental consent. Internetnews.com quotes Xanga CEO Hiller in a statement as saying "Users were able to initially indicate that they were at least 13 years old when registering for the site, and then afterwards post a younger age on their profile" (Carlson). In this case, the hosting website faced the consequences of improper blogging and faced a major lawsuit. Blogging legal troubles can range all the way from original poster up to the host of the site.

During my final semester of high school, I worked at a probation office where I saw firsthand a blogger's misfortune. A coworker of mine had been referred to her probationer's myspace.com account. The probationer had posted on his account that he liked to smoke marijuana regularly, enjoyed fighting, and planned to use a fake penis to pass his upcoming drug test. Legally it would be hard to prosecute him for simply saying that he liked to do these things, but posting his plans for violating his probation and trying to illegally pass his drug test certainly backfired on him when he was caught. These examples all demonstrate the harms of incorrect blogging, but correctly used blogging can bring very positive outcomes.

"The Tartan Online," a student newspaper at Carnegie Mellon, explains that corporations are catching on to the blogging craze. Bagmi Das writes "Fredrik Waka, who created a site based solely for the promotion of corporate blogging, advocates the use of blogs for several reasons: building customer and media relations, facilitating internal collaboration, aiding recruitment, and attaining high rankings in search engines" (Das). The site continues to describe how some blogs can be almost unnoticeable, while other blogs can have a huge impact. As an example of a blog having a huge impact, they describe how snakesonablog.com, a promotion for the recent motion picture "Snakes on a Plane," not only promoted the movie but helped shape it to the audience's liking (Das).

What separates a good blog from a bad blog? As with any writing, a successful blog is dependant on a variety of characteristics. In order to illustrate these differences I have chosen two blogs. I chose "Lightchange" by Lovely at lightchange.blogspot.com as successful blog, and "Blue Steel" by Nico at blue-steel.blogspot.com as an unsuccessful one.

Within a few seconds of looking at Lightchange you can realize that the author, Lovely, is a teacher at numerous elementary schools. The page is illuminated with pictures of different students against a wide variety of backgrounds. Each post takes about 5 minutes to read and is broken up into short paragraphs. Most posts start with a short introduction, pictures with short explanations, and end with a conclusion of her experiences for the day. Her structure follows good basic writing skills, whilst her photography and short paragraphs follow the informality of a diary. Lovely writes, "This is Guihyun. She loves acting. I liked her energy. Not energy in that sense of, "Wow, where do you get all your energy?" But more, her spirit-energy. Does that even make sense?" (Lovely). It feels almost like a picture book for adults.

At Blue Steel, almost no illustrations are available. A typical post consists of an online quiz taken by Nico and his results. These quizzes range from "Which Buffy the Vampire Character are you the most like?" to "Are you the Nerd? The Geek? Or The Dork?" He also posts "fun science questions" and top 10 lists. My first thoughts when I enter his page is "you probably don't care about your results from these, why should we?"

A deeper look into the blogs shows different insight, but similar results. Lovely at Lightchange writes about her emotions and thoughts as she experienced them chronologically. Her writing style varies from sentence to sentence and is never repetitive. Although she does her best to explain each of her students' personalities directly, she does not do the same for herself. She uses poetry and quotations as well as her own writing to allow to reader to formulate her own personality. The blog is a diary of her life, open to anyone interested; however, the subject matter of a young teacher's care for her students is certainly more appealing for an older crowd that is able to relate. After contacting Lovely on her blog, she said that Lightchange was created "out of sheer boredom."

Nico at Blue Steel takes a different approach. His posts range from checklists to useless quizzes with rare updates to what he is doing in his life. His monotonous writing style conveys no emotion, and his subject matter is no better. The majority of his posts are simply copy/pasted from other sites or chain e-mails. He provides no insight to the seemingly useless information he provides. He has created a few 'diary' type posts, such as his posting titled "Graduation." Nico writes, "Just a quick note to let you all know that I've finally graduated...Woohoo! Four long years seem so short right now. It's 5 am, and I must hit the sack, so Good Night, and Good luck." This post provides an expression of his excitement with "Woohoo!" and provides some insight to his life, but he gives the reader no reason to be interested. There is nothing that makes the reader feel like they know Nico; he is just another face in the crowd. He provides two actual sentences in his post: one explaining that he graduated and one explaining the time which can be seen in the timestamp anyways. Nico has no clear target audience or purpose. I suspect that his target audience is his peers due to the vagueness of his "updates," but there is no evidence on his blog of their interest. This blog is the epitome of useless posting.

The popularity of the blogs can be demonstrated by the comments on them. Lightchange is only 3 months old with replies ranging from 0-3 per post. Blue Steel on the other hand is 3 years old and hasn't received any comments at all this year. Although I doubt that either one of these authors expected to create some sort of "ultrablog" with millions of subscribers, the differences in their blogs can still contrast successful and unsuccessful blogging.

The blogging epidemic has grown quickly because of its versatility. The author can pick any subject of interest to write about, and unlike books, a reader can go through dozens of blogs within an hour. Blogging is also free to publish and informal, which is more welcoming to the general public. A plethora of reasons can be found that contribute to why blogging has grown so fast, but successful blogging still requires well toned writing. Although the blogging topics vary greatly, poorly thought out writing is an evident downfall in the majority of blogs. Ranging from unpopular blogs to expensive lawsuits, mindless ranting shows consequence in some form or another. Concrete evidence from both sides of the spectrum shows that not all blogging is worthless as many people say. However, which side of the spectrum a blog falls in is made very evident by the quality of thought the author puts into each post.

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