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Blogs:as Digital Design and Documentation
What is a Blog?
• “A blog (a portmanteau of the term web log) is a discussion or information site published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first.”
• From Wikipedia
Common Features
• Relatively short “posts” written by the author(s)• A “comments” section under each post• A searchable archive of past posts• A “Blogroll” of links to other related blogs• Embedded images, video, and other multimedia• Third party “widgets” that add other content to
the blog
A Million Uses
• Politics• Food• Popular Culture• Online Journal/Diary• Religion• Corporate Branding• Music
• Family• Celebrities• Movies• Academics• Humor• Poetry• Really Anything
Quality
• A blog is as good as it’s author and it’s content. A blog being a blog in and of itself does not make it useless or frivolous.
• A blog kept by a well-known professor who is active in his or her field can make a perfectly reliable academic source.
• In other words, a blog is just a genre and platform. It is not inherently good, bad, useful, or fluff.
As Digital Design
• Traced back to 1997, blogs emerged along with web publishing tools and CMS (content management systems) that allowed non-technical people to produce web content for the first time.
As Digital Design
• Blogs are almost never designed from scratch. They are built by making selections from templates.
As Digital Design
• Through the use of hyperlinks to other webpages and links to other blogs, they are not singular documents; rather, they exist within a community of documentation.
As Digital Design
• This community, along with the comments sections, makes blogs an interactive experience.
As Digital Design
• Blogs publish instantly without needing approval or consensus from marketers or corporate sponsors.
• Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s comments about Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday party in 2002.
• Soldier's blogs during second Iraq War.
As Digital Design
• Though posts run in reverse chronological order, blogs have no traditional beginning or end. They can be entered, explored, and left in non-linear order.
As Digital Design
• It’s considered bad form to change a blog post without acknowledging the change to your readers.
• This “rule” emerged bottom up instead of top down.
• Highlights never finished nature of digital documents and need for transparency in digital author/reader relationship
Why are we blogging?
• Low-risk, informal place to work out ideas through writing
• Responding to your group members weekly helps collaboration of ideas
• Jump start on writing content for your final project
