Posts Tagged ‘corporate media’
how i learned to stop worrying and love to blog
I have never been as hyped as many Communications scholars or bloggers about the democratic possibilities of The Internet. Like Cass Sunstein, I tend to think that The Internet encourages segmentation and therefore reduces the chance of “unanticipated encounters” and “common experiences.” Moreover, it seems that the primary model for blogs to have a big impact is to bring underreported stories to the attention of the mainstream press, thus further legitimatizing corporate media’s influence.
Nonetheless, I’ve watched recently as the so-called “socio-blogosphere” has grown substantially (see: Contexts Crawler). Even though it seems every second assistant professor has a blog these days, I’m somewhat concerned that too many of them serve as public diaries or discussions of trivial things (like frustrations with certain stats packages), rather than discussions of ideas. The gold standard for making a blog substantive and meaningful, while still personal has to be Chris Uggen, whose regular discussion of big social issues, frequent graphing, and lucid insights into the National Basketball Association are unbeatable. While I recognize that my above smack talk will compel me to live up to higher goals (if anybody reads this), I’m going to try my best and not let my commodity fetishism for the latest Mac take over.
