the revolution will not be televised, but it might be blogged

In his valiant attempt to gauge the democaticizing effects of the Internet, Yochai Benkler places a lot of emphasis on user-created and regulated content. Indeed, this is a hot topic in the Internet world, a phenomenon commonly known as "Web 2.0." Personally, and I think Benkler would agree, the whole "Web 2.0" concept, inaugurated in 2004 at O'Reilly Media's eponymous convention, is a little too optimistic. It is certainly not the "revolution" that founder Tim O'Reilly claims that it is. Rather, "Web 2.0" is just a fancy name for recent trends in Internet usage, in which collaborative work, open source material, and user control are common goals. So I would like to take this opportunity to use one of the "Web 2.0" crown jewels, the blog, to examine the blog. Initiate meta-blog.

In my mind, this is the big difference between the blog as a source of information and the mass media as a source of information. A blog can be boring and irrelevant to 99% of potential readers -- meaning anyone with an Internet connection -- yet continue to exist. It is important as a medium because it allows into broader circulation (though not necessarily demographically) a whole set of discourses that would never be considered "air worthy" in the traditional mass media sense. Television, radio, newspaper and magazine companies only disseminate information that they consider to be worth the capital necessary to do so. As such, they generally feel an obligation to air or publish things that will yield returns. Even entities like the Washington Post, known for printing daring and revelatory material, stake their claim for validity on the fact that they produce hard-hitting stories. If a subject is not particularly arresting, mass media entities are often obliged to "punch it up" a bit. I'm thinking here of the weeks upon weeks of repackaged Natalee Holloway coverage on FOXNews, long after all the other networks had moved on. The issue I am talking around here is sensationalism, and though it may not always take a form as obvious as purple prose or yellow journalism, it is always, to some degree, present in the mass media.

Blogs need not be sensational and most are not hard hitting. They are valuable because they allow into circulation a whole set of ideas that would never be considered worthy of airwaves or newsprint. Blogger.com does not depend on this post to receive a certain amount of hits, create advertising revenue, and pay for itself (at least partially) the way other media do. So I argue, blogs are not innovative because they can be posted by anyone and read by anyone. The forte of the blog is its ability to reach a targeted number of readers, while at the same time being generally ignored by everyone else. A blog need not be interesting to the public at large (I dare say ours is probably not). Thus freed from the obligation to be entertaining or arresting to a wide set of readers, a blog (like ours) can actually get down to the business of addressing issues. 

Benkler's first two case studies are exemplary. No mass media outlet would dare publish thousands of corporate emails. Why? The answers, ordered from most relevant to least in terms of media concern (1) it would not sell (2) it's illegal. Until they had been made sufficiently salient issues through the investigative efforts of concerned citizens, no media outlet would touch the Sinclair and Diebold scandals. However, those small groups of concerned citizens who coalesced into full-fledged movements would never have had access to the information had it not been made available online, where it passed unnoticed by the public-at-large.

In sum, I'm happy that most people will not read this blog, nor care to. It is a forum for our group to discuss issues that we find relevant to our course, our readings, and our papers, without having to strike a hard-hitting or sensational pose. If some net stumbler happens across it and finds it relevant and intriguing, great. But, if not, our little blog is still a success if only for this reason: I would rather speak thoughtfully and productively in a small group than recklessly shout to hold the attention of a large one.