![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What's your rationale for having a blog?
Nov. 16th, 2004 02:11 pm(In this entry, "blog" refers to things like blogspot, LiveJournal and other similar kinds of sites. Additionally, when I use "him" or "he", it is intended to be gender-neutral.)
In a recent post,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lcklmslm said that she was considering closing down her blog, because she felt that the things she wrote about weren't interesting to anyone other than her. I hope she won't close it, but the decision is up to her.
To me, that kind of attitude seems to defeat the purpose of having a blog, which is to provide yourself with a way to express what you want to say. In today's society, it's hard for an individual to make his (or her) views known, because the mass media tends to cater to those who are either rich, powerful or appealing to society as a whole (think celebrities). In this aspect, blogs can serve an important function in making known views which aren't popular, run contrary to public opinion or otherwise can't be expressed (for instance, your views on politics, entertainment, education, or fashion).
The corollary to this is that some blogs become so large, and so popular, that they become the very thing they were trying to avoid becoming: the mass media. When people start believing what they read on blogs as the gospel truth, that raises an interesting issue about the amount of research that goes into verifying that what's posted is factually correct.
Blogs are written by humans, so they are not immune to shaping the truth to suit their own views, just like the mass media. However, most bloggers don't have the resources to verify that what they post is accurate. This leads to a situation where bloggers link to or quote other bloggers, who presumably have done the necessary research, who share their views.
While this is easier on the blogger, since he doesn't have to do the research, it can also lead to him suffering a loss of credibility if his original source is wrong. This is analogous to the NYT (New York Times) having to apologize publicly after Jayson Blair used questionable facts in writing his pieces for that newspaper.
I have more to say, but at this point I think it deserves its own entry.
The takeaway from this entry is that you shouldn't want to give up your blog just because no one else seems to be interested in it. For all you know, there could be people who are reading your blog but are too shy to comment in it.
In a recent post,
lcklmslm said that she was considering closing down her blog, because she felt that the things she wrote about weren't interesting to anyone other than her. I hope she won't close it, but the decision is up to her.To me, that kind of attitude seems to defeat the purpose of having a blog, which is to provide yourself with a way to express what you want to say. In today's society, it's hard for an individual to make his (or her) views known, because the mass media tends to cater to those who are either rich, powerful or appealing to society as a whole (think celebrities). In this aspect, blogs can serve an important function in making known views which aren't popular, run contrary to public opinion or otherwise can't be expressed (for instance, your views on politics, entertainment, education, or fashion).
The corollary to this is that some blogs become so large, and so popular, that they become the very thing they were trying to avoid becoming: the mass media. When people start believing what they read on blogs as the gospel truth, that raises an interesting issue about the amount of research that goes into verifying that what's posted is factually correct.
Blogs are written by humans, so they are not immune to shaping the truth to suit their own views, just like the mass media. However, most bloggers don't have the resources to verify that what they post is accurate. This leads to a situation where bloggers link to or quote other bloggers, who presumably have done the necessary research, who share their views.
While this is easier on the blogger, since he doesn't have to do the research, it can also lead to him suffering a loss of credibility if his original source is wrong. This is analogous to the NYT (New York Times) having to apologize publicly after Jayson Blair used questionable facts in writing his pieces for that newspaper.
I have more to say, but at this point I think it deserves its own entry.
The takeaway from this entry is that you shouldn't want to give up your blog just because no one else seems to be interested in it. For all you know, there could be people who are reading your blog but are too shy to comment in it.
