Week 12: Blogging worth dying for?

Absolutely! well in the right context anyway. Blogging is a medium of communication. Is that medium specifically worth dying for?

Communication, freedom of expression certainly is. The increase of populous knowledge is directly related to freedom of mass speech. It doesn't matter if what I have to say is relevant to a specific topic or not, because relevancy is the perspective of the user. I would not go so far as to say that what I have to say is worth dying for, but my ability to do such allows me a voice, and a participatory role in society. Defining norms and social constructs through various expressed opinions.

The obvious rebuttal to all of this is to question the importance of a blog post. No, we don't need hundreds of posts about the last drink Jessica Simpson had before leaving Le Deux on Thursday night. At least not from a micro-scoped view (more on that in a minute). I argue that it's not that this has nothing to do with the medium of blogging, but with the content. For example, teen people, tiger beat, seventeen... are each of these magazines making a positive contribution to knowledge in this country? More so than the New York Times or Boston Globe? In terms of serious news, pre-teen magazines are far from relevant. In a state where information is free, it's hard to look past content. But what about in China, a place where photography is limited, and electronics can be confiscated for national security at any moment. The entire internet (which most Americans view as an equal free place) is completely monitored and censored. What if you had to get information to the rest of the world about a horrible act your government was committing? Would you trust CNN? In a situation where your world is upside down, why would you trust an intermediary to spread your story when you had access to the tools to do so?

So content is taken out of the equation in terms of micro-view of importance. But when we want to analyze societal shifts of interest, viewpoints, opinion, then these blogs become windows into the minds of its authors. In times where so much is written about people (facebook, friendfeed, okarut) blogs provide a view of a person from that person.

So the question posed, what is the importance of blogging? Is it worth dying for? Absolutely. The positive aspects of information spread and analysis out weigh the fabricated negative of content. To say that blogging isn't important is like saying that news papers aren't important. As many mediums as possible, as long as they're well maintained, should be available to people for communication. Each medium offers unique characteristics. Blogging is the evolution of an editorial section. instead of having one-way communication, blogging enables a-synchronous communication with limited censorship (topic for another discussion).

On a side note, I think the administrative role is important to recognize, as well as the break down of roles in general. That break down normally only occurs in one direction though. For example, when reading a blog, the average user feels equality towards all other posters and responds to them as equals. This could be in response to doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. The point is to that person everyone is equal. But in the eyes of the doctor/lawyer/... they are being talked down to, their social role in the real world has not carried over to hold the same level of recognition in the virtual. This can lead to feelings of disrespect and foster hostility. How dare you talk to your superior like that?! This is where medium is outweighed by relations. Even though the virtual world offers an augmented communication method, the roles in the real world do not go away. This was exhibited in the early 90s-2000s in corporate emails, where co-workers would send informal emails back and forth. The emails did not retain the same level of respect that formal analog voice communication carried, so tensions built and interaction in the real world broke down because of it. This is an example of where the medium is secondary to the roles of the participants.