Blogging [Hardcover]

Thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition of Blogging provides an accessible study of a now everyday phenomenon and places it in a historical, theoretical and contemporary context. The second edition takes into account the most recent research and developments and provides current analyses of new tools for microblogging and visual blogging.

Jill Walker Rettberg discusses the ways blogs are integrated into today’s mainstream social media ecology, where comments and links from Twitter and Facebook may be more important than the network between blogs that was significant five years ago, and questions the shift towards increased commercialization and corporate control of blogs. The new edition also analyses how smart phones with cameras and social media have led a shift towards more visual emphasis in blogs, with photographs and graphics increasingly foregrounded.

Authored by a scholar-blogger, this engaging book is packed with examples that show how blogging and related genres are changing media and communication. It gives definitions and explains how blogs work, shows how blogs relate to the historical development of publishing and communication and looks at the ways blogs structure social networks.

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

1 What is a Blog? 5

A brief history of weblogs 6

How blogs have adapted to a social media ecosystem 14

Three blogs 17

Defining blogs 30

2 From Bards to Blogs 36

Orality and literacy 37

The introduction of print 41

Print, blogging and reading 44

Printed precedents of blogs 45

The Late Age of Print 47

A modern public sphere? 50<ló„