Blog on a Blog on Blogging

The blog I am commenting (blogging) on is called BlogOnBlogs a weblog review by the RSC (Richard Stockton College, New Jersey) Intro to New Media Studies Class, Fall 2003. This blog was a project that was conducted in conjunction with a visit from Jill Walker, who is a digital culture scholar and Associate Professor of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen. I have followed some of Dr. Walker's work during my thesis research into blogging.

One of the focuses of this class was on reviewing blogs and determining possible genres In writing reviews, the following criteria were used:

• Identity -- Who is behind the blog? Is the author an individual or a group of people? Is the weblog a personal or professional project? Is its presentation formal or informal?
• Design -- What does the visual design of the blog establish about its purpose and intent? Is the site more about information of aesthetic appeal? Is the site easy to navigate?
• Content -- Is this a topic-focused blog? What genre of blog is it? Is the content informative, educational, entertaining?
• Time -- How long has the site been in operation? How often is it updated? What does searching through the archives, from the first post forward, reveal? Has the blog changed over time?
• Linking -- Are there many links with comments in the posts? Does the blogger appear to mainly link to a particular type of resource, "authorative" sites, etc.? Does the main purpose of the weblog seem to be link to other sites on the Web, or is the blog more of a journal/forum for local content?
• Blog Roll -- What other types of sites does the blogroll link to? Does the blogroll indicate what type of community the blogger is trying to identify him or herself with?
• Inbound links -- Using Google, determine what sites link to this blog. What community of readers links to the site?
• Discussion/comments -- Is this a discussion-oriented blog? If so, how active are the comments on the blog? Do many of the same people comment often? How would you describe the types of comments made? Likewise, are there any trackbacks from other sites?
• Audience analysis -- Taking into account all of the above, how would you describe the blog's target audience?

As a result of the reviews, it was determined that classifying blogs according to content is difficult at best because blog content is so varied. Instead, it might be more feasible to classify blogs "as 'formal' genre -- the majority of blogs share certain technical characteristics (regularly updated, posted in reverse chronological order, various types of engagement with the larger network as detailed in Dr. Walker's weblog definition) -- and perhaps these technical commonalities define blogs as a genre in the same way that 5/7/5 syllables define haiku."

This is of extreme importance to my research as my initial intention was to attempt to classify according to content. I am now in the process of reevaluating my research goal in light of this information. Stay tuned!