Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series– Jill Walker Rettberg
Ch 3: Blogs, Communities and Networks
Rettberg’s discussion of the growth of social networks and the blogosphere puts me in mind of lichen. She uses a lot of organic imagery to discuss electronic networking and compares social software to exo- and intraskeletons. However, I think that lichen make a better metaphor because lichen are made up of discrete entities working together to make a single entity rather than a body that denies each of us our individuality.
Additionally, the older a successful lichen is the farther out it spreads – think of how expansive the older Facebook network is compared to the newer Twitter. Notice that the pattern of the spread more closely resembles Paul Baran’s idea of a distributed network than one with a central hub. Although the lichen spreads out from a central location, the individual parts are connected yet still distinct – they can survive without each other.
Distributed Conversations
To extrapolate from the aforementioned idea of distributed networks, the lack of a central hub means that there is not one natural concentration of power. Anyone can blog and, therefore, anyone can become influential or powerful. However, according to Rettberg and Clay Shirky the law of power is also observed on the Internet: people/blogs with power tend to accumulate more power in a new social system like the internet. As Shirky says “Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard.” In other words, we still decide who to listen to. The conclusion then is that even though anyone can blog, that doesn’t mean that it matters. As I have previously mentioned, one of my fellow students discusses this article by Garrison Keillor in her blog. In the article, Keillor laments the death of what it means to be a published author at the hands of electronic media that allow self publication:
Self-publishing will destroy the aura of martyrdom that writers have enjoyed for centuries. Tortured geniuses, rejected by publishers, etc., etc. If you publish yourself, this doesn’t work anymore, alas.
But, in light of the almighty law of power, it seems to me that Keillor is dead wrong. People still gravitate towards power and there are still haves and have-nots. Now that everyone is in the game the race is even more difficult. Just because you can publish doesn’t mean that you will or that it will amount to anything.
Social Network Theory
An interesting distinction that Rettberg makes is between the purpose of blogs and the purpose of social networks like Facebook. Mark Granovetter’s theory of weak ties:
If A and B know each other very well, and A and C know each other very well, it is highly likely that B and C also know each other. If A needs a job, she’ll ask B and C. They probably won’t have any new information, because A already shares most of the information that B and C have. There’s a far greater chance A will get new information – for instance about a job that might suit her – from her weak ties, that is, from acquaintances and people whom she doesn’t see very often. The greater social distance between A and her acquaintance D means that D knows more things that A doesn’t already know.
Blogs may be linked because the authors know each other or simply because one of them likes to read what the other has written. In contrast, people are usually linked on Facebook because they know each other. The implication is that blogs are more centered around the dissemination of information and ideas than social media sites, which are centered around community building and maintenance. If weak ties facilitate the dissemination of information better than strong ties, then a blog with several weak ties to other blogs or blogging communities is a better information hub than a blog that is part of a strongly interconnected blogging network. Furthermore, if online communities are too strongly tied to each other, then they can become closed communities where there is very little flow of new information. Without this influx of new information, it is possible that rumor and misinformation could bog down this community. If this conclusion is connected to the law of power, then it is conceivable that one or two powerful blogs or internet sites could rampantly propagate these rumors and misinformation because while they are monitoring only what is in their own communities there are many more people who are monitoring them.
* Extended
The video linked above is a TED talk by Clay Shirky discussing institutional vs. collaborative models of social media. If you refer back to the distributed network vs. a network organized around a central hub, you will get a visual of what he is talking about. Basically, by organizing media in a collaborative model (like Wikipedia), organizations can take advantage of input from anyone who wants to participate. In contrast, an institutional model (such as Fox News) only accepts input from select individuals. The trade-off is power. Collaborative models have no central power structure that mediates who can contribute and what they can contribute – that would be too unwieldy with massive amounts of contributors. However, institutional models do have and exercise this power and thus have more control but fewer contributors and contributions. Shirky comes down in favor of neither side but instead shows the drawbacks and benefits of both systems.
ivoryboard 