Politics of Representation
An after-note to my last post: I have since found a really interesting webpage written by Daniel Chandler on ‘Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web’. That would have been helpful a few days ago, but I am fast running out of space for the rest of the topics I had hoped to cover!
I read a funny blog post the other day about how everyone just wants their 15 megabytes of fame. This fits in well with some of the ideas about authorship of blogging that I have been exploring in my own research. However, visibility and voice in blogging need not only be about narcissism, but can also have political implications.
Lennon (2003:77) posits that ‘[t]he important point is that widely available, inexpensive Web publishing lets anyone get out his or her story and perspective. Bloggers then link to it and thereby spread the word’. Blogging can be seen as inclusive, as technologies have advanced so that it is very easy to set up and maintain a blog. It is, however, important to note that it is only inclusive for those who have internet access, some internet knowledge/ability, and who have the time involved in maintaining a blog.
Roberts-Witt (2003:78) notes the discourse of the ‘democratization of information and individual empowerment’ that was bandied about in the early days of the internet and Slevin argues that the internet has created ‘a new dialectic of empowerment and powerlessness’ (2000:4). In terms of empowerment, as with other forms of internet expression, blogging is a way that people can be heard. As one blogger puts it, in the title of his political blog, the ‘smallest minority on earth is the individual’. The smallest minority can have a voice on the internet through the form of blogging and this voice can be heard by a potentially unlimited audience. The dialectic of powerlessness is evident in the cyberage as those without access to the internet may potentially be left behind and lose the empowered foothold that the internet active world can take advantage of.
Of course, as with any expressions of opinions, blogging raises issues of the freedom of speech on the internet. While some blogs may advocate peaceful political causes, such as blogging for Nepalese democracy, others may blog hate, racism, and violence. Luckily, I suppose, these latter blogs are harder to find - I did not manage to find any!
I read a funny blog post the other day about how everyone just wants their 15 megabytes of fame. This fits in well with some of the ideas about authorship of blogging that I have been exploring in my own research. However, visibility and voice in blogging need not only be about narcissism, but can also have political implications.
Lennon (2003:77) posits that ‘[t]he important point is that widely available, inexpensive Web publishing lets anyone get out his or her story and perspective. Bloggers then link to it and thereby spread the word’. Blogging can be seen as inclusive, as technologies have advanced so that it is very easy to set up and maintain a blog. It is, however, important to note that it is only inclusive for those who have internet access, some internet knowledge/ability, and who have the time involved in maintaining a blog.
Roberts-Witt (2003:78) notes the discourse of the ‘democratization of information and individual empowerment’ that was bandied about in the early days of the internet and Slevin argues that the internet has created ‘a new dialectic of empowerment and powerlessness’ (2000:4). In terms of empowerment, as with other forms of internet expression, blogging is a way that people can be heard. As one blogger puts it, in the title of his political blog, the ‘smallest minority on earth is the individual’. The smallest minority can have a voice on the internet through the form of blogging and this voice can be heard by a potentially unlimited audience. The dialectic of powerlessness is evident in the cyberage as those without access to the internet may potentially be left behind and lose the empowered foothold that the internet active world can take advantage of.
Of course, as with any expressions of opinions, blogging raises issues of the freedom of speech on the internet. While some blogs may advocate peaceful political causes, such as blogging for Nepalese democracy, others may blog hate, racism, and violence. Luckily, I suppose, these latter blogs are harder to find - I did not manage to find any!
posted by Alida van Klink @ 8:41 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home