How The Blogs Came to The Internets

“Blogging is the only addiction that won’t make you fat, drunk, or stoned.”
—Erica Jong, novelist, HuffPost blogger (taken from The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging)

A quick Wikipedia search will tell you that weblogs evolved from online diaries of the early 90’s.  In fact, one of the very first bloggers was a Swarthmore student named Justin Hall who kept his online diary for eleven years.  The New York Times calls him “the founding father of personal bloggers,” outlining the intensely personal information that Hall chronicled from his late teens to throughout his twenties.  The term “blog” was eventually coined by Peter Merholz, another blogger who shifted the syllables of weblog (named a few years earlier) to we-blog, and ultimately shortening it to blog.  Today there are almost as many genres of blogs as there are books – spanning a range from personal blogs to corporate blogs to fashion blogs to travel blogs.  Feministing probably straddles the lines over more than one type of blog, but its messages often lay in the political.

One of the best known and most read activist/political blogs is the Huffington Post, who conveniently came out with a book right in time for my project – The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging.  I am not lost on the irony of reading a book written by bloggers about how blogs are so much better than books, but the information is incredibly relevant to the issues I want to focus on.  One of the most interesting aspects of the history of blogging is that the demographics are so different than what one might see with more traditional modes of writing.  According to Technorati, just as many women blog as men, and bloggers are less likely to be white than other internet users (but more likely to be Hispanic).  In fact, English is not always the most common language for blogs: we are closely tied with Japanese.

What makes blogging so innovative is that for the first time relaying and reading news can be interactive.  All previous rules about who “owns” the news need to be thrown out – suddenly anyone can tell a story or voice their opinion, and others are free to offer their critiques.  The HuffPo book writes:

“Broadly, we believe that the cause of democracy is served by having more information out there.  We believe that democracy is advanced by having more voices included in the conversation.  When everyone is a journalist, everyone can serve the journalist’s role of keeping watch on our leaders and sharing stories that outrage or inspire.  Blogging also teaches us that we all have the power to determine what is news…People have talked a lot about blogs, but this fundamentally democratic aspect of them is just beginning to be understood.”

The HuffPo Guide to Blogging brings up sociologist Robert Putnam’s 2000 book, Bowling Alone, which I am intimately familiar with, thanks to a slightly obsessive AP government teacher.  Putnam argues that Americans are losing social capital and becoming lonely because we no longer join civic groups, clubs, or volunteer organizations.  What the HuffPo Guide points out is that civic societies have simply changed, and now exist in the form of social networks weaved together by blogs and comments; “these social networks aren’t as inhibited by our in-person tendencies to meet up with folks of the same race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and disability status.  We judge fellow bloggers on their ideas and wit.  Personally, we think that’s a much better way to choose compatriors this raucous RSS feed called life.”

Justin Hall created an entire online universe revolving around his personal drama and sexual escapades, but the format Feministing uses to make serious points about modern feminist issues remains the same.  And this community is not only about coming together, but taking the collective energy and enacting change in the “real” world.