Reading Response #2: Rettberg Chapter 2, 3

Chapter 2: "From Bards to Blogs"

https://courses.furman.edu/pluginfile.php/74883/mod_resource/content/1/Rettberg_BardstoBlogs.pdf#page=1&zoom=auto,0,620

This chapter touched on many different aspects concerning blogging.  Overall, I found the main point to be how blogging can be viewed as a Second Orality.  It combines features from the early days when speech was the only form of communication and the days of Literacy, in which print was invented and became a form of mass communication.  The dialectic nature as well as the ease with which users can also publish online makes blogging a far superior method not only to print, but other forms of mass communication such as television and radio.  Creating a blog is cheaper, easier, and more practical because you can operate it from your home.  Because entry costs are essentially a computer and an internet connection, virtually anyone can become a blogger and thus you are able to find your information form thousands of different sources.  Therefore, you must also be wary of the legitimacy of the information. It was also interesting to hear some facts that made me realize just how fast our culture is changing.  The first popular personal computer came out in 1984! That was not even 30 years ago.  Fast forward to 2006, now 75% of the 18-44 population is getting online at least weekly.  Fast forward to now, where I would guess a higher percentage than that is getting online daily.  Being so young, it is sometimes hard to see the changes that have happened just in the last 10 or 15 years and it is almost scary to think where we will be in another 15. 

Chapter 3: "Blogs, Communities, and Networks"

https://courses.furman.edu/pluginfile.php/74885/mod_resource/content/1/Rettberg_BlogsCommunitiesNetworks.pdf#page=1&zoom=auto,0,620

Rettberg focused on the sociology of blogs and social networks in this chapter and why and how they work.  One reason is the ease with which conversation takes place.  Because everything is archived, you can use a search engine to find topics you are interested in and weigh in on it with people you've never met before.  In addition, the social aspect of blogs results in "friendships" and people with whom you have interact with online on a regular basis.  Bloggers can have online identities that are completely apart from their life offline.  Also, conversations can be a fast or as slow as the participants want.  Boyd summed up what defines online social networks apart from other networks into 4 aspects: persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences.  Personally, I never considered myself a blogger and would never imagine myself having a blog.  But I never realized that Facebook and Twitter are hardly any different, if different at all.  They have all the aspects described by Boyd (depending on your privacy options) and are operated in the same way.  Whether we like it or not, we are all (or almost all of us) a part of "the blogosphere".