Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Blogs: A Communicative Tool

Blogs are a relatively new tool used to communicate news, ideas, personal experiences, and many other things. They allow information to be provided to the public quickly, thus making them a powerful and influential tool.

Blogging is a great way to reach out to many people quickly. This is great for news; people can be updated on the most recent of events just as they happen. But, television and radio seems to do this well enough. People can see or hear the news on the television or radio and can spread by word of mouth to those who have not yet watched or listened. Besides, to learn about the most recent events through a blog, one must access that blog multiple times a day to learn about the event before they would anyway by television, radio, or word of mouth.

Because anyone can write a blog, they can show extreme bias. News can be inaccurate, or in some cases, untrue.

Amanda Gehres has a blog post where she talks about how an author of a blog uses his blog to share with the world what it is like in Iraq. He talks about the Iraq and its citizens giving information that one can discover only through visiting Iraq. This is a great use for blogs. It allows someone to share what something is like that few have experienced in a way that other media will never cover it.

Another use for blogs is to talk about your life. Tabby wrote a blog about all the things in her life that were creating stress. While she shared what was stressful about her life, she was able to vent by writing about it. People were also able to make comments in support of her.

Blogs allow the less outgoing, such as myself, to become slightly more extroverted. This is due to a sort of sense of anonymity. Readers of my blog may know my name, but they may not know exactly who I am.

A blog can be an incredibly powerful tool. A particular view of something that other media would ignore can be shared. People can share their lives and get the support they need while others can relate to them and realize they're not alone. Blogs also allow some to be more outgoing, which could shape their personality. Writers must know that what they post can be accessed by anyone. Readers must be aware that some blogs could be biased and present misleading information. Blogging has good and bad uses. When used correctly, they can be very beneficial.

1 comment:

  1. Christian--

    So you see blogging as not as efficient as TV or radio watching for news updates. What about for the other ways we use blogs that you mention? How do they compare to TV & radio broadcasts?

    Thanks for a great class!

    ReplyDelete