Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Blogging Community (reaction to Ch. 2 of Barlow)

In Chapter 2: "The Blogs In Society" of Aaron Barlow's "Blogging America The New Public Sphere," Barlow goes in depth about the society that exists within the blogging community and how it is effecting our "real" society. Barlow quotes Andrew Keen about how the blogging community is vastly growing and how there will be over five hundred million blogs by 2010 if people continue to be active bloggers. It is amazing how there is a community itself amongst the bloggers on the web aside from our "real" community. Being a blogger myself, I can say that I am a member of this blogging community and it did not come to my attention until reading this chapter about how incredibly large this particular community is.

An interesting point Barlow talks about are the criticisms of the blogs and the minimal of filtering when one is blogging and posting up entries for the public's viewing. As stated in the text by Barlow, a criticism many people have about blogging is that it is too easy. However, I am one to disagree with this criticism. I see blogging as writing in your diary except you are able to type it on the computer. Whether the individual decides to post their diary entries as public or not is totally their peragative. However, considering how far this society has come in regards to technology and advancements, writing your journal on the computer should not be made so difficult. It is true that with minimal and in most cases no filtering at all, people are allowed to blog about anything and everything they wish to blog about. With this arises the problem of the readers having problems about the particular topic and the thoughts that an author is blogging about. Barlow discusses the situation of people getting hatred comments to even death comments on their blog posts. Yes, everyone has their freedom on the web to post, say, or do whatever they wish to do so. However, I come in a stance that if it is not something you want to read about, then you should not be reading it. It is unfortunate to see how many people out there are sitting behind the screen sending death threats to people who are writing about particular topics that are not in the reader's favor.

With the threats and negativeness seen throughout the blogging community, people have been arguing for a "Blogging Code of Conduct." This can be understandable in a sense that in communities, there are always rules and regulations you must abide by, and considering the fact that blogging has now formed its own "community," there should be some sort of conduct that bloggers should abide by. However, I do not necessarily agree that this "Blogging Code of Conduct" will be as successful. If someone were to break a code of conduct, the most they can do is disable the user from posting blogs or comments. But if this were to ever happen, who will be the person or group in charge, regulating, and passing these "codes of conduct" to the bloggers? It just does not seem like a realistic idea to me.

With everyone from all over the world using the internet and being a part of the blogging community, it is going to be impossible to make rules and regulations. However, I believe that it can be a lot worse than what it already is due to the fact that there are no rules and that ANYONE can have access to the internet and do whatever they wish to do on it.

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