Aimeée Morrison on Blogs

Since the mid 1990's blogging has become a very fashionable way of expressing points of view through the internet. Morrison gives an in-depth on each of the sub-catorgories surrounding blogs, from the definiton of a blog, to the genre of blogs, to the use of them in writing and in literary studies.   Morrison's definition of a blog is quite elaborate but, it has to be because it includes a wide range of accesories to it. She explains that "The weblog as a writing form is fundamentally about fostering personal expression, meaningful conversation, and collaborative thinking in ways the World Wide Web had perhaps heretofore failed to provide for; not static like a webpage, but not private like an email, as well as more visually appealing than discussion lists"  Her explaination of it not being static like HTML but not being personal either is spot on. Opinions, views and news are constanly changing, therefore one's blog cannot be fact, to an extent of course. By making a blog one must realise that your entry may be seen by poeple of the oppoiste opinion and one must be open to critism. On the other hand, from a student's point of view it is elucidative to revise what my peers are thinking. One of my favourite blogging webistes is http://liblogs.ca/lists/list.html. It is here where I can find many of my other interests and guilty pleasures, particuraly 'Women and Politics'

Morrison goes on to write about blogging in the academic world. She investigated and found that "57 percent of..blogs were written by self-idientified university students" This is, according to Morrison, as well as Facebook  accounts and MySpace accounts. (which can act as miniture blogs sometimes!) Morrison has introduced me to a man called Daniel W. Drezner and I have fallen in love with his work. He speaks of political science with such ease and spends hours blogging the political world he lives in. In his "about me" page, seen here http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/, he asks himslelf, like Morrison states, why he spends so much of his time "blogging instead of writing peer-reviewed academic articales?" Morrison believes that it is because he is a co-editor of a book on blogging.

The last matter Morrison speak of in realtion to blogging is its affect in Literary Studies. She divulges that there are many blog sites worth visiting and revising for literary essays. Morrison finds BROG and Into the Blogsphere very worth while reads. She sees this field of research in its early stages, but on the other hand she finds that it may be short lived as YouTube has many vloggers (video blogs) which seem to be becoming the prevelent form of blogging. Social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and even more so, Tweeter are becoming mini-blogs for people to express their opinions and views.

To conclude, Aimeée Morrison writes on blogging in a basic way in which the ordinary person can read and understand. This makes her article an exciting read and informative.  

On a side note one of the vloggers I follow on YouTube is Natalie Tran. She has become one of the most subscribed on YouTube and for the past year has been posting videos for The Lonely Planet where she sent all around the world to comment and rate holiday destinations. click here for her YouTube homepage.