E-Publishing - Week Four

Blogging and Blog Fiction

Lecture Four - we looked at blogs and blog fiction.

Blogs

We looked at tips for writing a blog, and why people write blogs. How to make blogs stand out and how to make them original.

"Technically a blog is a series of posts arranged in chronological order. Most agree, however, that they are an important form of expression. Though many modern blogs are personal observancies updated on a regular basis, the earliest blogs weren't rants or observancies. They were lists of links maintained by a handful of tech savvy individuals. It wasn't until the late 1990s that blogging evolved into what we see today." (Moodle)

Blogging is an easy way of publishing your thoughts to the web so that other people can view them and also make comments on them.

Blog Fiction

We also looked at blog fiction. Blog fiction is a form of fiction writing that uses blogs to reach its readership. It is a small-scale fringe activity in the world of blogging and although it has generated some literary critical interes, it remains isolated. It is presented in many forms, from a pretend diary or posted novel or a serial blog.

We looked at some examples of blog fictions including 'the professional pet' and 'wilf's world'.

Blogs of course mean different things to different people. Blogs allow people to write whatever they want to write for other people to read. Of course the blog could be extremely accurate or full of lies and is generally from the opinion of the author so in most cases can be incredibily biased. Blogs are a useful way of expressing your thoughts and feelings and getting your views out on the web, anyone can read them, follow them and comment on them unlike the olde version of a diary when is generally meant to be kept private. Blogs have undergone a lot of criticism recently due to less than factual content and the usual anonimity of their authors. Countries such as China, Iran and Italy are starting to clamp down on blogging and also websites such as Twitter to try and curb the population's freedom of speech. Recently, however, blogging has experienced a win against the super injuction when bloggers exposed information the media was trying to keep quiet from us over a super injuction on the dumping of toxic waste by oil company Trafigura. It does make you wonder what else has been hidden from us in the past!!

Keep blogging and tweeting everyone!!!