The Blogs in Society

Over the past couple of weeks we have been reading about blogs and its effects on the Internet, communication, and society. In Barlow, A. (2008). Blogging @merica chapter two he talks about something that is affecting our "real" world from the blogoshpere. Barlow mentions how most people view the blogger as a whining loser in "mom's basement" (Barlow, 2008). Of course many people who blog do not want to be look at in such a way. There are many people out there actively tyring to rid bloggers of this stereotype, some even tried creating a code of ethics. This caused a controversy in the blogging world, where some bloggers thought this to be a great idea and the others disagreed. Some bloggers felt that their thoughts were under attack. They would receive harassing messages and even at times death threats. Barlow points out two of these ideas in the voice of Moulitsas the founder of Daily Kos, and Clarke the author of a popular nature blog. At one point these two and their ideas crash. Moulitsas's opinion being that blogs are a place that make the forum for speaking easier because of the certain aspect of being anonymous; so people are more likely to test their thoughts. Also that because your thoughts are out there for people to read they might draw up controversy and emotions of other readers and this will cause a reaction to you. Were as Clarke states that people are putting in "real" world emotions and facts and that blogs are "an expression of real world ideas" (Barlow, 2008).


Just as Barlow states that both of these arguments have a certain truth, I strongly agree. After my new experience with blogging I can now relate to fellow bloggers and see the need for both of these types of blogging. Sometimes I feel I need to express my "real" world emotions and other times I am testing my ideas anonymously in a public forum for later use in the "real" world. This then brings the argument of content, who is posting it, and is it reliable. Barlow says that these problems in the blogosphere will continue until there is a "happy medium" were content, community, emotions, and reactions will work together.