of Blogging Types & Communities
The problem of blog classification
What with the size of blogosphere being so vast, it is not a surprise that
blogs has evolved in leaps and bound
existing in many categories and sub categories. Today, the myriad of styles and layouts used in blogs is making it increasingly difficult to identify a type of blog from another. Kress & van Leeuwen believes that audience automatically look for the centrepiece of the layout as the nucleus of the information (1998 pg 196). A well designed blog should have a
'centrepiece' or logo to let the audience know the type of blog it is.
A screenshot of CNN.com with the CNN logo at the left hand corner for easy identification.However the simplest way to classify a blog is via its subject matter or content. Several examples:
1.
Fashion Blog: e.g.
Gofugyourself- This blog focuses on current celebrity fashion.
2.
Journal: e.g.
Quaintly.net- Refered to by Margaret Simon as 'The Diary'. Where individuals record their day to day activities.
3.
Political Blog: e.g.
Jeff Ooi- Blogger turn politician, Jeff Ooi gives his opinions on the local political scene
Blogging CommunitiesA blogging community is made up of bloggers with shared interests. Vinson says that a blogging community can exists via the readers through
comments left at posts,
hyperlinks connecting the blog to other sites or a
shared language (2006). An example of a blogging community is the
MyBlogLog site. This service by Yahoo is essentially a
social networking site that allows its users to interact with other users via their favourite blogs (Kirkpatrick 2006).
References:
1. Kirkpatrick, M 2006,
MyBlogLog: Readers Network Around Their Favorite Blogs, TechCrunch, online, retrieved 3 June 2009, from
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/19/mybloglog-readers-network-around-their-favorite-blogs/.
2. Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 1998, Front Pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout, In Approaches to Media Discourse, eds Bell, A & Garett, P, Blackwell, Oxford.
3. Simons, M. 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, Creative Economy, online, retrieved 3 June 2009, from http://www.creative.org.au/webboard/results.chtml?filename_num=229836.
4. Vinson, J 2006, Blogging and communities, Blogspot, online, retrieved 3 June 2009, from http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2006/06/26/blogging_and_communities.html.
