Carina's Blog

interlude: general thoughts on weblogging,internet,"democracy" and power of the user

The original type of weblog is a personal news site; linking to other sites it refers to within the text. Depending on its topic, a weblog could contain the latest news, comments or criticism on technology, popular music, fine arts, or news generated by professional media institutions, as well politics and society.
The significant difference to other, non-weblog publishing is the blogger’s personal attitude and point of view in his writings, which does not have to serve any interest than his own and does not require editing or control by a person or institution other than the writer.

There are a large number of sites offering their users to use the blogging software for personal publishing, which allows them to post on the web in a very easy way without much technical knowledge being required. In fact every weblog is in a way tinted by the viewpoint of the person writing it, these blogs are rather a form of diary or journals.

Another aspect that makes internet publishing so powerful and at the same time hard to regulate is the fact that nation-state control loses its meaning for a medium that acts beyond national borders and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. See: Slevin 2000: 214-5
The Internet is a truly global medium and might in some way seem like the realisation of what McLuhan lined out as the “Global Village” in the 1960s, displaying an image of a world where media transcend space and time and connect its audience totally.

Time' has ceased, 'space' has vanished. We now live in a global village...a simultaneous happening." [...] "Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another.

McLuhan 1967: 63

In relation to McLuhan’ s idea of the “Global Village”, the community of weblogs seem like the cyberspace realisation of the transcendence of time and space and the ultimate involvement of people from anywhere on the world with each other, catching a glimpse on each other’s lives, interacting and influencing each other’s lives.

Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended
Our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.
McLuhan 1963: 3

Internet publishing, and weblog publishing specifically as it is not controlled by any institution having an interest in state policies or economics that could affect the opinion uttered, which holds the possibility of offering the internet audience an alternative view on events and centre-based opinions.
For example, since the Iraq war started, there have been a fair number of so-called “war-blogs” on the net which are written by normal inhabitants of Baghdad writing about their life and situation, which offers readers an alternative view on what is shown and printed in Western news. Salam Pax blog

Simon Garfield writes in his article on the The Guardian website:

An alternative journalism sprang up and the news agenda shifted a little from the one imposed by the traditional media to whatever was hot in the blogosphere. In the United States, criticism of Bush and the war in Iraq was solidified in weblogs long before the mass media risked being 'unpatriotic', while in Iraq, Salam Pax, the pseudonymous gay Baghdad Blogger, maintained a powerful insider's voice throughout the conflict.

Examples like these foster the initial idea of internet enthusiasts who envisioned this new medium as the most democratic of them all, offering access to unlimited information just “one click away”, involvement and unimpeded right to publishing freedom as well as a wider audience having the chance to grow together as a community, let the world become a “global village”.
Whilst one can by no means deny that the internet has the ability to change the perception of a user than any other medium, as it functions transnationally and offers space for the commoner to have a say, and not solely large institutions in power, there are nevertheless contradictory views on these pro-internet visions.

Firstly, the emphasis is on the possibility of accessing a wide range of information and opinions, rather than on the actual realisation of this ideal – many users actually prefer to search for like-minded people and information they are due to their attitude interested in. In other words, a pre-selection of information by the audience takes place in favour of their individual taste, so “there is reason to think that the Internet is more likely to increase social fragmentation than it is likely to promote social consensus.” (Graham 1999: 83)

Secondly, the democracy theory leaves us with the question of what is actually so democratic about the Internet and Internet publishing and thus primarily leads to the question what defines democracy. Democracy generally constitutes a form of government under which the citizens can indirectly or directly alter the legislation and take part in the ruling of the state. Transferred to internet publishing though we may find that this is not quite the case – everyone is free to publish almost whatever one wants, but the salient point not being fulfilled remains the fact that noone can change anything by that. Information is published, people can agree or disagree, but it does not contain the possibility to control or rule what is written or what happens. See: de Havilland, 2003

One could however argue that, based on Francis Bacon’s formula “knowledge is power” and “the more one knows, the more one will be able to control events”, the internet provides its users with the power of unlimited always accessible and constantly stored knowledge, like a giant global library of ideas and images, and seems therefore like a democratic medium in the sense of knowledge being available for everyone and hardly regulated.
However, what is provided by Internet publishing such as Weblogging is less knowledge, but more information that its reader can accumulate if they choose to.
Whilst knowledge is the awareness and understanding of facts, truths or information gained in the form of experience or learning and is thus the process of acquireing a skill of use, a “how-to-do”, information is rather a body communicated facts, a message or a “what it is” which does not mean it is any useful to its obtainer.

This argument can lead to reason that information spread by publishing on the internet is actually nothing more than a useless accumulation of random information that does not acquire its receiver with a skill or knowledge, and is therefore not of any value or providing them with any control.

Furthermore can the internet just for one simple reason hardly be the medium of global democratic distribution of information, that is the fact that only 12,7 percent of the world’s population has access to the internet, more than half of them consist of Europe and North-America, which therefore take the lead in the providing of information available on the net, alongside Asia with an internet access rate of 31 percent. Technologically under-developed continents such as Africa and Latin-America do thus – despite their relatively big population – not get a share in the right to obtain information off the internet or publish themselves.

From this perspective, the internet can hardly be regarded as the democratic medium it is claimed to be,but surely as a medium offering different and more possibilities for the spread of information and giving more people the opportunity to publish their views than other media does.

posted by Carina @ 6:17 pm