With the advent of technology, new ways of persuasion have given rise to new rhetorical situations that were not apparent in the old days of Rhet.. Of those ‘new ways’, I would like to briefly discuss blogging. Blogging has evidently boomed recently. And of the famous booming blogs; blogspot(powered by google) and WordPress(the one I’m currently using). Here are some interesting stats I found about blogs (from the blogworld)
- Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
- Over 57 million Americans read blogs.
- 89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
- Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs.
- over 120 thousand blogs are created every day.
- There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day.
- 22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs.
- Blog readers average 23 hours online each week.
of the characteristics that I belive this new medium brings are:
Invisible Audience
I myself have started blogging about a year ago, and I described the process on my blog as ‘having my own space on cyberspace’. I can see the advantages to using a digital medium when sharing one’s experience or expressing one’s self through a blog . First of all it is an advantage not to see the audience as one feels compelled by having a physical audience. It is like acting on stage or acting to a camera; It is one thing to know that you might have an audience, another to actually face them. One might feel more free to express one’s self through the lens or similarly through the medium of blogging.
Forming bonds of identity that cut through geographical bounds
It is true that there are basically communities that exist online. As pointed out by James Zappen in his article Digital Rhetoric: Toward an Integrated Theory (2005), quoting Sorein Matei and Sandra J Ball Rockeach that those communities may cuts across gender, income, age, education, and ethinicity.Moreover the idea of forming virtual identities is true in a sense that one can have an online identity, that may or may not be more distant to the real self.
Time in your own hands
Another advantage is having time on our side. I can have an inspiration about a topic, sit down and write about it(or use a text editor for the matter if I am a computer savvy) and then when it’s good enough I post it.
And the great thing about this online medium is that the audience can view it at their own leisure. At the time that they wish and at the place that they wish. Almost instantly they can read and more over respond.
Privacy, Limitation and Access
Moreover I can control who can see what, and if I wish to be anonymous or not. Giving permission, and granting access rights.
Attaining Perfection
The great thing about the blog is that posting is not the end, it could be the middle of the process. You can easily republish or update your posts, if like me you would like to work on perfecting them, making it a job that can consumate a lifetime.
Also if you wish, you can allow for commenting, which makes it ever the more interactive.
Last but not least (cliché, so true..)
Blogging an end in itself
At a time when I was blogging (which is not at all these days), I felt for some time that I live to blog. I would be going through my day thinking about interesting stories to blog . Sometimes I would disable comments and at others I add restriction to some blog posts to be seen by the certain friends with which I would love to share things. Thereby protecting my privacy.
