THE BLOG AS A NARRATIVE FORM
The blog is a narrative form optimized for the web. All weblogs draw from a set of visible features and functions, and underlying motivations, that make them ongoing “conversations” among bloggers and readers – stories with pasts, presents and futures. Unlike portal sites, blogs are not juxtapositions of datum flotsams.
A site may utilize blog-style UI conventions (calendar, archives, etc.) but if it has no underlying narrative – no story moving through a past, present and future – it is not a blog.
Blog narratives are open-ended; herein they differ from most other narratives forms. Nevertheless, blogs are designed and structured to engage readers in an ever-unfolding, interactive dialogue.
A journalist’s blog, then, can tell us about her passions, politics and fears – through today’s entries (text, photos, multimedia) and previous entries, and through the expectation of future entries. Contrast the narrative nature of a journalist’s blog with the Google News site, where stories are clustered semantically, independent of narratives, or even newspaper “house style” contexts.
BLOGS, IDENTITIES AND AUTHENTICITY
In weaving a narrative, a blog thereby creates an identity. The more authentic this identity, the more likely a reader will trust the blogger “behind” (perhaps we should say “in”) the site.
Blogs feel authentic because of their consistent individuality: the thematic and stylistic regularities – as well as the idiosyncrasies, quirkiness, and foibles of the blogger. Blogs feel more human than non-narrative sites.
It’s hard to imagine a software program that could write and maintain a convincing blog (now there’s a Turingesque challenge for AI enthusiasts!).
(Postmodernists might argue that all blogs/identities can be interpreted as fictions!)
THIN MEDIA, CELEBRITY AND COMMUNITY
“In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.” – Momus
Only a handful of (so-called “A-list”) blogs receive enough visitors to offer advertisers broadcast-style marketing power. But then, broadcasting is a paradigm from the mass media age.
Blogs provide a thin slice of media access (our cultural environment’s scarce resource!) to millions. With a blog, anyone can be a celebrity, if only within a small community. For bloggers, it is not the size of the community that matters (!), but its collective identity (e.g. Google weblog offers fans ongoing reports, analyses and predictions, creating a trustworthy pro-Google identity).
Blogs can create communities and community identities, then, through collaboration and/or by gathering a following. Reciprocally, insightful comments can change a blog’s identity (and therefore a blogger’s identity), by influencing future entries.
THE BLOG AS A KILLER APP
The explosive uptake of blogging, as well as the ever-increasing reticulation of the blogging community (the “blogosphere”), indicates a global paradigm shift in the cultural understanding of media.
Already massively popular, weblogs represent a sociocultural departure from read-only, one-to-many communications models. The weblog combines interactive narrative with notions of identity, authenticity and community, in a manner suggestive of pre-literate, oral/tribal communications networks.
The blog is not just a narrative form; it is a disruptive narrative form.