Species of a new genre

There seems to be an agreement among the academic community that individual blogs have become a new writing genre. A young genre still in formation and evolving at full speed.

I would suggest something else. I have the feeling that collective, thematic and news blogs are emerging as differentiated species within the main blog genre.

Where are each of them leading and differentiating from each other? Interesting question and object of analysis. They are for sure stirring some media hype. For business people and entrepreneurs it means ways and venues of possible big business

In a lively article on the economics of blogging, Wired magazine cites Chris Taylor appreciations of how readers relate to blogs.

"I think blogs are a fundamentally different medium from magazines. Why do we read blogs? We read them for a quick fix. A quick titillating view of someone else's life, a quick political fix, a quick link to something fun here or there. Or maybe lots of little quick fixes. We don't want to sit down and read a magazine-length article on any topic unless we're reading a magazine."

I am no so interested in knowing whether of not blogs will become an industry. What calls my attention is that in Taylor's comment there is an interesting observation about the relation between reader expectations and genre differences.

Food for thought

Blogging as laboratory work

Using a weblog as a kind of routine activity to try out combinations of words, link them to own ideas and comparing them with ideas from other people while trying to produce some new meaning is the basic research method used in the Humanities and the Sciences.

Blogging then is another tool in my Research work. I have known that for a while ago, but it feels nice to write it down in plain English :-) in order to share it with my eventual readers.

And to reaffirm my conviction that this is another one among the many tools I have in order to do my research work.

Weblogging from Iran

Iran is mentioned usually on Western Media only around issues of being part of Bush's "Evil axis countries" and big politics.

The recent earthquake that has destroyed a city and thousands of its inhabitants has made an impact and some other humane stories of sorrow have leaked through.

But interesting things are happening in Iran in the area of mass communication. Hossein Derakhshan's English weblog on Iran is compelling reading because it presents and reports on the weblog movement that is growing in that country and has become an Iranian weblog movement with a big network of educated people all around the world.
Their fight is for democracy and reform.

Among many of the stories in his Blog on November 23/03 he reported on the blogging activity of Mohammad Ali Abtahi a reformist politician and vice president of the country.

This is good news of democracy in Iran. In his website Abtahi tells about himself and his everyday life, including photos taken with his mobile phone camera. The best of all is his idea of listening to others. It is possible to take contact with him and comment on his blog.

I have just done it. We will see if he has the time to answer.