Blogs, Definitions (again)
There are numerous ways in which blogs may be defined (see also Walker, 2003, and Wilkie 2003a, 2003b). However while the intricacies of definitions are useful for some scholastic exercises, what is of more contemporary significance is the recognition that blogs are now not merely a noun and a verb (I blog, I have a blog), but a medium in their own right.
This might be controversial - I don’t really know - however it is clear that there are now numerous sorts of blogs (diet blogs, war blogs, political blogs, research blogs, group blogs, and so on) and that as a concept it makes little sense to consider them collectively as a genre. We have genres of blogs, just as we have genres of novels, television, painting and cinema. Each of the latter are media, not genres. Each of these media support and allows an extremely diverse range of practices and expressions.
Blogs are at this point, which is a useful moment if only because it helps force us to recognise that the Internet, or the Web, is not a medium in the common held (pragmatic) sense, unless we want to consider paper as media. (Which it is, but I assume my point is clear.)
note: This page forms a part of a hypertext essay by Adrian Miles. The homepage for this essay is located at:
http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=74
A long version of this paper (containing some but not all of the text contained in the hypertext version) is available at:
http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=76
