Enough about blogs???

Do some online research into blogs as a new media genre: their origins, development etc and share your findings in your entries. What forms of expression are they really good for?


'When a type of discourse or communicative action acquires a common name within a given context or community, that’s a good sign that it’s functioning as a genre (Miller, 1984). The weblog seems to have acquired this status very quickly, with an increasing amount of attention and commentary in the mainstream press reinforcing its status.' (http://mediatingconflict.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-genre-literary-form-medium.html)

My research led me to this above quote, which i felt was helpful in looking at blogs in relations to genres. Blogs are one of the most popular of online content, informational blogs allow writers to share their interests, skills, and knowledge with interested readers.

An interesting article by Frédéric Filloux has also helped to shed light on the subjects of blogs. He quite rightly states that blogs started as "little more than populist rants" but has now "transcended its origins and grown into a fresh new journalistic genre, one that is likely to become the main engine of modern news sites."

I found it interested how blogs have now become trusted sources or even help shape debates. Alot of journalists now use blogs (check out “The Note” a blog, created by ABC News in 2002 and read the story in The New Yorker about its founder Mark Halperin), which people find far more interesting and enjoyable to read than a proper news story, therefore if you want to find something" livelier, more fun, with more flesh, you turn to blogs maintained by trustworthy journalists". http://www.mondaynote.com/2009/01/05/blogging-a-new-journalistic-genre/

Music sharing online

Music is one of the fastest growing industry's, however the once ever popular CD is gone. People no longer rush out to buy the latest single or album of Justin Timberlake, instead it's all about downloading it on to their itunes. People are able to downloading music and sending it to their phones as their latest phone tone or putting it on their own CD's to give to friends. It as had a huge impact on the way music is funded and financed. This means that companies such as Virgin, Woolworths due to the lose of sales severely struggled to keep up, and as a result went busted. Big music stores such as HMV no longer sell singles and the Music charts are mainly based on downloads.

In relation to networking sites, in my experience many bands through the likes of BEBO set up the own web pages in order to encourage fans and also post their latest news and most importantly their upcoming performance dates. There can also put music players on their pages which they can download their music on to for people looking at the page to listen to. Its also a free source which means its a great way to endorse themselves and perhaps 'make it' by breaking through into the music industry.

Online sharing of Popular music has already changed society and will continue to. New generations are channelled into consuming music via the internet, it has become the norm.