Week 2, Task 2: Blogging

As a form of communication, i find a blog to be very one sided. I feel that it is basically one persons view on a subject being put out there for people to scrutinise, but it is not the same as proper communication or conversation. After all if someones view posted via a comment didnt go with your argument you can basically delete their comment, erasing their view. On the other hand, a blog allows a person who may normally be shy to have their view listened to and spread across the internet.

I think a blog is similar to a journal or newspaper. A set of ideas are presented and the chance to respond is available, but a very selective process decides whether or not your response will be published. Newspapers choose which letters to print, if any, and will not post any that are radically different to ideas they have presented already.

I do not find blogging as much of a personal experience as it is portrayed to be. This could be because I have to do it for an assignment instead of creating it on my own, but I find the whole idea to be quite strange. Whilst this blog is available to the world, how many people are actually going to want to read all the thoughts of an individual who has just discovered the internet? A blog is an interesting way to portray ideas but is it really that reliable? It is hard to know exactly who your audience is when there is no way of telling who has actually been looking at the page, outside of a visitors counter. Also, what do we count as appropriate to be posted? There is a content policy for a blog, which says that the following are forbidden: pornography and obscenity, hateful content, violent content, copyright, private and confidential information, impersonation, unlawful use of services and spam, malicious codes and viruses. (http://www.blogger.com/content.g)

So there is a limit on what can be posted in a blog, and what is deemed appropriate for your target audience, but content of some sites could still be questionable. Extremist political ideas of anarchic ideas could be spread as long as they are not seen to promote violence or hate against certain groups. Overall I find the blogging experience to be strange, and quite questionable of just how much information is too much information. I think some degree of privacy exists, but if a person wanted to keep their privacy private, why would they publish a blog in the first place?