Bridging the Gap: a Genre Analysis of Weblogs

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Bridging the Gap: a Genre Analysis of Weblogs Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2004 Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs Susan C. Herring Lois Ann Scheidt Sabrina Bonus Elijah Wright School of Library and Information Science Indiana University, Bloomington {herring,lscheidt,sbonus,ellwrigh}@indiana.edu Abstract online activity has been increasing exponentially, enabled by the release of the first free blogging Weblogs (blogs)—frequently modified web pages in software (Pitas), and fueled by reports from the which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological mainstream media of the grassroots power of blogs as sequence—are the latest genre of Internet alternative news sources, especially in the aftermath communication to attain widespread popularity, yet of 9/11/01 and during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. their characteristics have not been systematically Current estimates place the number of sites calling described. This paper presents the results of a content themselves blogs at over 1.3 million [1], of which analysis of 203 randomly-selected weblogs, comparing about 870,000 are actively maintained. Moreover, as the empirically observable features of the corpus with blogging software becomes easier to use, the number popular claims about the nature of weblogs, and of bloggers continues to increase. In the several finding them to differ in a number of respects. Notably, months during spring 2003 in which we conducted blog authors, journalists and scholars alike exaggerate the research for the present paper, the number of the extent to which blogs are interlinked, interactive, publicly available blogs more than doubled. and oriented towards external events, and under- As with other Internet communication protocols estimate the importance of blogs as individualistic, that have blossomed into seemingly sudden, intense intimate forms of self-expression. Based on the profile popularity (e.g., email; the WWW; peer-to-peer file generated by the empirical analysis, we consider the transfer), blogs are being hailed as fundamentally likely antecedents of the blog genre, situate it with different from what came before, and as possessing a respect to the dominant forms of digital communication socially-transformative, democratizing potential. on the Internet today, and advance predictions about its Journalists see blogs as alternative sources of news long-term impacts. and public opinion [22]. Educators and business people see them as environments for knowledge 1. Introduction sharing [14]; blogs created for this purpose within an organization or institution are sometimes called k(nowledge)-logs. Last but not least, private Weblogs (blogs), defined here as frequently individuals create blogs as a vehicle for self- modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in expression and self-empowerment [6]. According to reverse chronological sequence, are becoming an Blood [6], blogging makes people more thoughtful increasingly popular form of communication on the and articulate observers of the world around them. World Wide Web. Although some claim that the All of this is purportedly brought about by the earliest blog was the first website created by Tim technical ability that blogging software affords to Berners-Lee in 1991[27], the present-day format first update web pages rapidly and easily. appeared in 1996,1 and the term weblog was first In this paper, we seek to characterize the applied to it in 1997.2 Since mid-1999, blogging as an properties of the emergent blog genre, and situate it with respect to offline genres, as well as with respect 1 A site created by Dave Winer as part of the 24 Hours of Democracy to the broader genre ecology of the Internet [13]. Our Project [27]. primary goal in so doing is to provide an empirical 2 By Jorn Barger. The clipping 'blog' came into use after Peter snapshot of the weblog in its present stage, as a Merholz started pronouncing 'weblog' as 'wee-blog' in early 1999 [6]. 0-7695-2056-1/04 $17.00 (C) 2004 IEEE 1 Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2004 historical record for purposes of comparison with future as an example of an "emergent" (rather than a stages of evolution. A further goal is to contribute to a "reproduced") web genre; for Dillon and Gushrowski theoretical understanding of how technological changes [11], it is the first uniquely web-based genre. Bates trigger the formation of new genres, which in turn may and Lu [3], Chandler [8], and Dillon and Gushrowski affect the genre ecology of a larger domain such as the [11] identify structural characteristics of personal Internet. Our analysis suggests that the blog is neither home pages, including the presence of personal fundamentally new nor unique, but that it—along with information about the creator, number and patterns of other emergent genres driven by interactive web hyperlinks; layout; presence of formulaic welcome technologies—occupies a new position in the Internet messages; and iconographic and technical features. genre ecology. Specifically, it forms a de facto bridge (See Döring [12] for a useful overview of this between multimedia HTML documents and text-based literature.) Content analyses have been conducted of computer-mediated communication, thereby blurring the home pages of business web sites [16]. Arnold the traditional distinction between these two dominant and Miller [2] find gender differences in the structure Internet paradigms, and potentially contributing to its and content of home pages created by academic breakdown in the future. professionals. The findings of the latter two studies suggest that 2. Background older practices from related off-line genres carry over into the web genres, making them at least partially 2.1. Genre analysis "reproduced" in the sense of Crowston and Williams [10]. A question that arises is whether blogs are an The present research is premised on the assumption emergent or a reproduced genre. Our analysis that recurrent electronic communication practices can suggests that blogs are neither unique nor reproduced meaningfully be characterized as genres, a perspective entirely from offline genres, but rather constitute a pioneered by Yates and Orlikowski [28] in their hybrid genre that draws from multiple sources, analysis of organizational uses of email. Yates and including other Internet genres. Orlikowski's work, along with much of the subsequent work it has inspired, draws on traditional models of 2.3. Previous blog research genre from rhetoric (see, e.g., Miller's definition of a genre as "typified rhetorical action based in recurrent Most descriptions of the blog genre to date situations" [24]). At its core, genre analysis is an emanate from blog authors themselves. Blog authors exercise in classification of "typified acts of tend to define blogs around their characteristic communication" based on their form and substance entries-posted-in-reverse-chronological-order format, 28 [ ]. Similarly, Swales [27] characterizes a genre as "a which is derived from the software used to create and class of communicative events" having "a shared set of maintain blogs [20]. Updates should be frequent: communicative purposes" and similar structures, according to Rebecca Blood [6, p. 9], one of the most stylistic features, content and intended audiences. In visible bloggers to publish in print about blogs, "most addition, Swales notes that a genre is usually named webloggers make a point of giving their readers and recognized by members of the culture in which it is something new to read every day." In terms of found. According to these criteria, weblogs are a good patterns of use, the prototypical blog is focused prima facie candidate for genre status, in that they are around links to other sites of interest (or other blogs) named, and—as we will show—tend to exhibit on the Web,3 with blogger commentary for added common structures and substance. value [5, 6]. This type of blog, in which the blogger "pre-surfs" the Web and directs readers to selected 2.2. Web genres content, is known as a filter. Blood [6] distinguishes three basic types of weblogs: filters, personal Recent years have seen a growing interest in the journals, and notebooks. The content of filters is identification of genres on the World Wide Web (e.g., external to the blogger (world events, online [10], [25]). As a type of web document, blogs are happenings, etc.), while the content of personal related to—and some would claim, replacing— journals is internal (the blogger's thoughts and personal home pages: both are typically created and internal workings); notebooks may contain either maintained by a single individual, and their content tends to focus on the creator or his/her interests. While to our knowledge ours is the first systematic genre 3 A high incidence of links is central to Blood's definition of blogs: analysis of blogs, personal home pages have received "I would go so far as to say that if you are not linking to your considerable attention from Web genre analysts. primary material when you refer to it—especially when in Crowston and Williams [10] cite personal home pages disagreement—no matter what the format or update frequency of your website, you are not keeping a weblog" [6, pp. 18-19]. 0-7695-2056-1/04 $17.00 (C) 2004 IEEE 2 Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2004 external or internal content, and are distinguished by The community blog analyzed by Krishnamurthy longer, focused essays. Blood adds that although the (Metafilter) falls into quadrant IV. The personal earliest blogs were filters, the journal type has now journals found on LiveJournal.com are examples of become more common. For Blood, blogs are unique (in quadrant I. Halavais' [17] study included examples her term, "native") to the Web, rather than carried over from quadrant III, a type also known as 'filter' blogs from off-line genres.
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