Is there a social structure to the blogosphere? You betcha. In Blogging: An Innocent Fraud?, LaShawn Barber comments on Nicholas Carr�s The Great Unread:
Carr calls blogging an "innocent fraud," a reference to a book on economics of the same name. The term is a euphemism for "lie," and Carr believes the assertion that blogging is "open and democratic and egalitarian" and different from mainstream media is an innocent fraud.I'm linking to the post because I think a fair number of bloggers feel this way. Speaking only for myself, blogging is open and democratic and egalitarian in the sense that starting a blog is free and non-discriminatory, and relatively painless to set up. The more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it, but you have to be realistic.
Read her whole post, plus the comments. (HT to Catez at Allthings2all. )
The beauty of blogging is that it is available to anyone with a computer who can read and type. Yet being a blogger is like being a citizen of a country: although the only "passport" needed is internet access, one still has to learn the "lay of the land," speak the language, obey the rules and follow the customs. And it's possible to do all of those things yet still find oneself a relative stranger in a relatively foreign land.
In his post, Carr mentions the "loneliness of the long-tail blogger" and says of the blogosphere,
As the blogophere has become more rigidly hierarchical, not by design but as a natural consequence of hyperlinking patterns, filtering algorithms, aggregation engines, and subscription and syndication technologies, not to mention human nature, it has turned into a grand system of patronage operated - with the best of intentions, mind you - by a tiny, self-perpetuating elite.I don't think the elite is as tiny as Carr claims, but the dynamic he speaks of is at work in a powerful way. Of "innocent fraud," he says,
The powerful have a greater stake in the perpetuation of an innocent fraud than do the powerless. Long after the powerless have suspended their suspension of disbelief, the powerful will continue to hold tightly to the fraud, repeating it endlessly amongst themselves in an echo chamber that provides a false ring of truth.
Shel Israel takes a different view entirely in An Open Letter to Nick Carr (HT to LaShawn):
What is so ironic to me is that according to Technorati, Chip is a mere 55,154th in ranking. While you are a formidable #610. Yet, he sent me to you. You got my hit, and now you are getting my link and I suppose that will get you more traffic, just like Michael Arrington's link to you might help drive a nice blip in your traffic.So who's keeping whose gate? And for that matter is it an open or closed gate?
In the comments to Carr's post, which are worth reading as well, is a link to a post at Civilities: media structures research titled Promoting Women Bloggers: Less Talk and More Action. Though dating from last year it is still quite relevant, and provides even more good links. The post looks at promotion of diversity within journalism blogging but has content applicable to the blogosphere-at-large, such as this:
Five years ago, science reporter Malcolm Gladwell sought to explain how ideas reach The Tipping Point and become an epidemic. In his formula of mavens, connectors, and salesman, he missed one thing: the jerks. That would be the one represented by the unlit match on the cover of the book. Somebody's going to say something uninformed enough for people to start calling that person a jerk, and it will enrage enough passions to get people moving.I'm not sure anyone's going to develop a sociological theory based on the utility of jerks, But Gladwell provides help in his new book, where he talks about the curious evidence of "priming" in controlled psychological experiments. Just thinking that one is a professor before engaging in a game of trivial pursuit helps people answer more questions correctly; when black students check off "African-American" before taking a test, their scores dropped. Another experiment is as simple as flashing a face, white or black, and then a gun or wrench. You know where this is going.
As Gladwell explains it, priming explains subconscious effects in individuals. I might suppose that there is a parallel theory about culture at large...
...As thinking individuals in a democratic society, we don't want to be subconsciously primed, or have wait until a prime event, for people to start to take notice of problems. We also may start to wonder whether blogging as we know it may prime people into certain type of behavior.
and this:
Let's face the truth: blogs are celebrated for their ability to react quickly to news, and to drive conversations... It's like needing a bunch of batters who can bunt for a hit and steal a base. But what is underappreciated is for someone to bat cleanup: to tie together disparate threads, to do the research, and to do the hard work that Dyson calls listening.There is also a statement about the male-dominated nature of the blogosphere: "Perhaps it is possible that certain practices in blogging that were honed by men are more receptive to men. Perhaps." that is worthy of its own discussion. I think there are gender-related patterns in blogging, as well as other patterns, that cause difficulty for blogs and bloggers that do not fit the pattern. But perhaps that's a discussion for another post :-).
If the blogosphere is a social construct, and Christian bloggers seek to influence the world for Christ, then how might Christian bloggers redeem the social structure of the blogosphere?
