English 328: Blogging and Mass Politics

Blogging and Mass Politics by Michael Keren is an interesting and insightful look at the blogosphere. As a blogger myself, I was surprised in reading about all of the politics that take place in the blogosphere. The only blogs that I follow are fashion blogs and if I had to put the respective blog owners into a category, I would say that they are mostly civilized because they all talk, listen, learn and self-reflect. I guess I would put myself into that category, as well. Although, I do not have very many followers and they hardly ever comment on my posts because I don't advertise my blog as loudly as others.

The most interesting thing in this article is the vast array of typology. I never knew that there was such a science behind blogging. As previously stated, the only blogger I have ever encountered is the civilized blogger. Granted, I have seen many people on social media who exhibit many of the other qualities attributed to the contentious and pretentious bloggers.

One thing about this article that irritated me was the constant use of examples from writers and authors who would have no idea what a blog is. I just feel like it is difficult to compare a type of blogger to a writer whose works were more relevant decades ago. Though we may learn about these writers (Sartre, Rousseau, etc.) in philosophy, theory, or history classes, I do not think that their styles of writing are exemplary of blogging style at all.

It had never even entered my realm that people could see blogging as such an intense thing. I use my blog to post pictures of my outfits, cute stories, or whatever. I see it as a blank canvas to say anything I want to. Obviously, many people see it as such but many use it to actively voice their opinions on touchy subjects or argue a point to death.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that is the coolest thing about the blogosphere--one can find large quantities of people to agree with his opinion and stroke his ego.

Overall, I found this article to be intriguing. Keren did a great job at identifying each type of blogger and including examples in the article. Though I did find the examples to be irrelevant to blogging, they made sense contextually to the kind of person he was attempting to describe.