Before creating this blog, I admit I'd had very little interaction with the genre. It seemed to me that blogging was something people who were good with technology did. And that excluded me... Also I thought that most blogs were 'diary blogs' as categorised by Margaret Simons - a place where people unleashed their thoughts, ideas and personal agendas on the unsuspecting public.
Through the process of creating this blog I've discovered how very wrong I was. Blogs are everywhere and seem to cover every possible subject. Not only that, they serve a range of social purposes and are a large force driving the changing media landscape.
There are blogs that give people a voice when they are otherwise oppressed, blogs that keep an eye on how the media operates, blogs that can show you how to do something, blogs that make you laugh, blogs that inform you and blogs that challenge you.
The form provides a unique opportunity to interact with other members of the online community, to participate, debate and learn. Blogs will continue to be contentious, as some areas of media view them as inadequately replacing professional journalism. But there are respected journalists running blogs now, it's becoming an expected part of the industry.
And what a blog provides, that hard copy traditional print doesn't, is the chance for the audience to be involved with a level of immediacy. It's this function that is most important. If I reflect on all the changes within the media industry that I've discussed in this blog (webisodes, cross-platform programming, user generated content, blogs etc) they share a common focus. They allow the audience to interact with the story in some way, to affect it, to comment on it, contribute to it or to share it.
This shared purpose will be integral to the new media landscape. Audiences are becoming used to being involved and in the future will expect it in most of their media interactions. So a blog, by its very nature, will be here to stay because of its accessibility.
Image source: http://blog.blackboard.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/07/13/blog_pr_square_2.jpg
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