Free Essay

New Cultural Icon Blog

In: Computers and Technology

Submitted By netidpark
Words 1377
Pages 6
With the invention of the Internet and World Wide Web, Information technology has had a great influence on America’s culture. It has changed the way people interact and exchange information. For instance, it provides a new way to communicate and share photos and videos. Also, it provides a new platform which is called web based diary, also known as blog (abbreviated from of weblogs) that contains online personal journals with reflections, comments from visitors and hyperlinks provided by the writer (Herring et al.). Eve Edelson describes it in simple words as “just” browser interface to web site publishing, however, blogs are used by different societies for different purposes and now has become a part of daily life for many bloggers. Matthew Mehan refers to “the blogsphere world as colorful and varied as the animal world. There is an evolutionary struggle for supremacy amongst bloggers” (qtd. in Mehan). A blog is ranked by the number of hits it receives from visitors and the number of outbound links it has. Also Mehan clarifies that there are levels of bloggers from novice those who have just entered the blogging world and up to a level of pounding fathers. Many bloggers use blogs as just a hobby but some blogging can also translate into business. There are some bloggers who blog almost every day to attract advertisers or even product endorsement offers. There are different visitor statistic analyzing sites that offer tools to assist those who use blogs as business tools. For instance, “Site Meter offers a free, basic hit count and link log in exchange for posting a logo-link to their website. It also sells one of the thousands of “site promotion tool boxes”, software tools which boost a blog’s hit count” (qtd. in Mehan).
In the academic level, there are mixed opinions to the advantages blogging can offer to students. Some think that it has increased “students’ online engagement”, while others feel blogging “fails to motivate students to become involved in the online activity”. Blogging has provided students with a platform to “share their learning experience and express their thoughts to the instructor” and other students. At the MBA level, blogs have helped increase interaction and the students get the facility to discuss in after class meetings (Kim 1242-1345). For instance, Eric Rauchway’s report in The New Republic states that blogging helped a doctoral candidate Scott Eric Kaufman, to develop his profile mush higher. When he posted a chapter of his dissertation and sought advice, he received 66 commentaries from people of different disciplines. Blogging can produce a truly better debate and gather opinions from other bloggers. Separate from using blogs for individual or academic information exchange, blogs can also help businesses and markets. Marketers analyze the blog’s thread and track the important bloggers to determine the influence of blogspher. Blog postingns can thus influence the product life cycle (Chen, Tsai & Chan 55). Companies use blogs for various purposes like an employee blog, a group blog, and executive blog, a promotional blog and the newsletter blog (Xifra & Huertas 270). They are also used as a “Medium as a communication platform with individual customers and other stakeholders” (qtd. in Singh, Veron-Jackson & Cullinane 284). For instance, General Motors uses its blog to discuss its latest designs with its customers. It has several blogs for different audiences. Blogs allow marketers to segment their customers and interact with them on a personal level to collect data. This collected data serves as a valuable tool for future marketing. Garmin, a market navigation company, uses blogs as a source of information to discuss topics from bike racing tips to NASCAR Events (Singh, Veron-Jackson & Cullinane 285). For the journalists, blogging can be an alternative source of new and public opinion. According to Kathy Gill the journalism itself is a collective diary that records common life. It is two-way communication and blogging is based on this concept of participatory journalism. The readers benefit by interacting with journalists and news organizations. Blogging provides many viewpoints on shared experiences and also serves as a data bank. Blogspheres thus can make or break news (Gill). With all these advantages, blogs also possess risks and threats to security and secrecy. One of biggest threats is that ideas can be stolen from the blogs because blogs conceal. Many use a different identity or name to conceal their true identity and they thus reveal more information than they realize because they know they can maintain anonymity. There have also been instances when people have revealed information without regard to how others may perceive it. This has resulted in many being “fired from his or her jobs or arrested after confessing to committing a crime on their blog” (Guadagno, Okdie & Eno 1995). Also, while Boyd Danah feels that blogs “corrupt and destroy the youth”, Mitchell, Wolak and Finkelhor contend that it poses a potential threat to the youths’ “physical and emotional safety” (278). Teenagers are at a high risk because they put on a false identity to try to impress other people. They hide their names, age and other detailed information because they consider it their personal space and feel free to use it the way they want. With the help of technology, like multimedia, they express their feelings, emotions, thoughts and experiences. Due to this, sex offenders take advantage of this and pose a threat. The youth that interact with each other are all educated but since anonymity can be maintained, harassment is also common. Information technology and blogs offer great opportunities to people to exchange information between each other and provide business interactive platforms to gather useful data. However, at the same time, it also has threats and risks. Opinions are different on whether it helps academically or at least at the school level. As far as business is concerned, many companies have received lots of benefits from blogs. Companies have aggressively managed different logs for different audiences with different purposes. Journalists also receive benefits from blogs because they provide them an alternate source of information. The risks and threats of blogging are mostly at the individual level and among the youth. Also, ideas can get stolen but suggestions and advices are also forthcoming. Many maintain a different cyber identity and reveal or conceal information at will. They themselves can become victims because of their own follies while also posing a threat to their friends as well. Technology and tools aid the compulsive bloggers in increasing hits to their sites and attracting advertisers. Blogging is here with us right now with associated benefits and risks. It has become a part of our life and become embedded into our modern culture.

Works Cited
Chen, Yun, Flora S. Tsai and Kap Luk Chan. "Blog Search and Mining in the Business Domain." Proceedings of the 2007 international workshop on Domain driven data mining . San Jose, California : ACM, 2007 . 55-60 .
Danah, Boyd. Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? 2007. 15 October 2008 .
Edelson, Eve. "Open-source blogs." Computer Fraud & Security 6 (2005): 8-10.
Gill, Kathy E. University of Washington. 15 October 2008 .
Guadagno, Rosanna E., Bradley M. Okdie and Cassie A. Eno. "Who blogs? Personality predictors of blogging." Computers in Human Behavior 24.5 (2008): 1993-2004.
Herring, S. C., et al. "Weblogs as a Bridging Genre." Information, Technology & People 18.2 (2005): 142-171.
Kim, Hyung Nam. "The phenomenon of blogs and theoretical model of blog use in educational contexts." Computers & Education 51.3 (2008): 1342-1352.
Mehan, Matthew. "FOCUS ON BLOGGING." 31 August 2006. mercatornet. 17 October 2008
.
Mitchell, Kimberly J., Janis Wolak and David Finkelhor. "Are blogs putting youth at risk for online sexual solicitation or harassment?" Child Abuse & Neglect 32.2 (2008): 277-294.
Rauchway, Eric. "WHAT I LEARNED AT "THE BLOGGING PANEL"." 06 May 2007. The New Public-Open Universityn TNR's Acardemic Blog. 16 October 2008 .
Singh, Tanuja, Liza Veron-Jackson and Joe Cullinane. "Blogging: A new play in your marketing game plan." Business Horizons 4 (2008): 281-292.
Xifra, Jordi and Assumpcio Huertas. "Blogging PR: An exploratory analysis of public relations weblogs." Public Relations Review 34.3 (2008): 269-275.
Young, Alan E. Social Media Marketing and the Hotel Industry. 28 August 2007. 16 October 2008 .

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