Response to Donald DeBoise 


In their blog post "Blogging as a Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog," Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd attempt first to define what exactly is a "weblog" and attempt to saturate this definition with new critique and insight primarily pertaining to the genre itself of blogging. A mentioned by Donald, this blog was written in 2004, although only ten years ago, it was a time when LiveJournal was the driving force in the blogging community and the act of blogging itself was new, exciting and densely definable. According to Miller and Shepherd, the blog is unique as a genre in that it acts as "the peculiar intersection of the public and private that weblogs seem to invite." With blogging, one feels a sense of intimacy with his or her writing, which is ironic due to the world wide accessibility that one's blog affords itself. Blogging exists as a unique combination between privacy and public access.

In his response Donald asks "what role did the blog play in the development of social medias we have today?" I believe that blogging was an instrumental force in the evolution of social media today. As I mentioned before, Live Journal was the first real force in internet blogging, but the site itself today has become obsolete. Blogging itself has developed into less of its original purpose as an internet diary of sorts and has been combined with social media itself. The most popular blogging platform today is likely Tumblr, which allows users to "follow," "like," and "reblog," other users posts much like that of Twitter or Facebook. So blogging, in turn has become a social network in itself. The community aspect of websites like Tumblr and Twitter allow for users to feel a sense of unitarianism with other users. When I first made a Tumblr account in 2010 it appealed to me because I wanted to be heard, but not necessarily by people I knew in real life. I felt included in an interesting camaraderie within the otherwise strangers with whom i interacted with on Tumblr. In this sense, I believe that Miller and Shepherd's genre analysis of blogs definitely applies to social media, in the case that we are counting platforms such as Tumblr as social media.