The discussion on how to define and present the weblog as a phenomena in a Danish context(see previous post), reminds me that I'm still working on my own "perfect" definition of the weblog (every new media researcher needs one such ;)), which will likely be needed in the book, that Ida and I are working on. The weblog is such a fuzzy thing, that it is indeed quite difficult to come up with a truthful definition. Technology and -feature-driven definitions of the weblog are IMHO very tricky, because blog-applications change all the time. The first blogs I read and my own first version of the blog did not have any comments, because they weren't integrated in the system, and a hardly existent feature in the early 2000's. If you argue that comments (allowing "conversations") are an essential part of the weblog identity, were those blogs then, per definition, not blogs?

One of the things, I learnt from Pia's and my political weblog project was, that Danish politicians used the "blog" term very casually, and if you wanted to discuss what they were doing under one hat (which made and makes a lot of sense to do), you couldn't base the discussion on the use of for instance certain platform technologies or publishing formats. What (most of them) had in common, was the experience of communicating in a new way to and with their readers - or the belief, that if they coined their writing activities online a "blog", the writing would automatically be considered being of a certain nature.

Another aspect of the weblog as a phenomena that really interests me, is that you can't say that the weblog is "just" a online diary or "just" a new form of socialising online. It is a way of socialising that it is grounded in the individual, and in a particular personal profile situated one PLACE (the blog) that other bloggers and readers relate to. But it is also a form of identity building that relies heavily on an understanding of identity which implicit sees the individual as someone who is only somebody by virtue of the people this individual lists and attracts attention from. Thus, through the blog you "brand" yourself as an individual through your social network and the way, you interact with - and expand it.

Hence, my attempt at a weblog definition these days would be something like this:
1) The weblog is a discursive practice on the www which allows the writer(s) to communicate in a particular way (often associated with terms like "personal", "informal", "dialogic" etc)
2) As a phenomena, the weblog is interesting because it can be situated in the intersection between personal expression ("me-writing", branding) and social networking ("we-writing", interpersonal interaction)

Hmmh.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 09:54