Blogs and Blogging: Text and Practice. By Aimeee Morrison

http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/view?docId=blackwell/9781405148641/9781405148641.xml&chunk.id=ss1-6-1&toc.depth=1&toc.id=ss1-6-1&brand=9781405148641_brand

Ms Morrison decides in her introduction to in a way hype up internet blogging, throwing numerous impressive statistics at us readers on the rise of the blog and its importance as a way of the public to vent their indispensible thoughts upon the world. She claims that blogging has become a form of "citizen journalism", a place where the public can foster their "personnel expression".
As Morrison proceeds in her piece, she again waxes lyrical on the blog and blogosphere for its interactability and its self-referentialism. She continues to give excellent examples of the usefullness of blogging for expressing thoughts and sharing ideas through hypertext links and simple social networking blogs such as facebook and myspace.
Morrison moves her essay quickly along into discussing the technologies behind blogging and brings terms like HTML, CMS and RSS into the equation; terms that simply confuse the regular internet user, like myself, who is happy with seeing the image on the screen and not really caring what makes it this way.
Next to fall under the gaze of Morrison are the different genres that blogging takes up. The author tells us of online diaries, personal journals and edublogs to name but a few. I feel that Morrison explains the genres and different aspects that blogging allows very well in this section of her essay. Morrison also offers us ways to navigate the blogosphere by presenting search engines such as googles blogsearch tool, which personally I found very useful and the blogcarnival website.
The issue of anonymity is also brought forward by Morrison as she tells us that even if the blogger tries to hide his or her identity through by what she calls "security by obscurity", that bloggers true identity will inevitably be figured out. She highlights the point that academics writing on blogs or discussion forums also face the same issues and maybe in a way this helps to keep the information they provide clean, pure and referenced. Morrison uses this link to drag the issue of blogging in academics into the equation and puts forward its advantages, such as discussion and interaction between academics that is usually available for all simpletons like us social bloggers to attain.
Overall, in my humble opinion, Morrison displays a willingness to encourage and promote blogging for all the article's readers, wheter they be academics or students, politicians or voters or any other form of living being with access to the internet and a computer.