Flat-Felled Seam

On Thursday we discussed a reading titled “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog” by Carolyn R. Miller and Dawn Shepherd. The reading discusses the different genres that weblogs have and why society is so interested in everyone’s lives. In the reading they say that in order to understand blogs as a “new genre” we first have to “understand the Kairos that makes this genre possible” and second how mediated voyeurism has played a role in the emergence of blogs as a genre.

Kairos is defined by Wikipeida as “the ‘right or opportune moment,’ ‘a time in between’, a moment of undetermined period of time in which "something" special happens. What the special something is depends on who is using the word.” It is also defined in rhetoric as "a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved." For blogs, Kairos means the opportunity for people to write or react at any moment, whenever it is convenient and to anticipate what people are going to say.

Mediated voyeurism played an important role in the emergence of blogs as a popular genre. Mediated voyeurism is looking at what is going on in other people’s lives. It has three parts that help define and explain it. The first is “the pursuit of ‘truth’ in an increasingly media-saturated world.” This explains that our society is focused on knowing the truth no matter how it is achieved and that knowing the “truth” is one of the most important things. I think that society is so intrigued by blogs because we think that if it is written in a blog then it must be true. We need a sense of reality and blogs makes this reality more “authentic.”

The second part of mediated voyeurism is “the desire for excitement.” An example would be watching an “amazing home video.” The excitement makes us feel that we were actually there. In that moment we “vicariously experience challenges that give meaning to life.” By reading people’s blogs, exciting as it is, we want to experience what the person in the blog experienced.

Finally mediated voyeurism is “the need for involvement, the desire to be part of the world around us, even though voyeurism by its very nature can provide only the illusion of involvement.” By creating your own blog and blog roll one has satisfied their “need for involvement.” Blogs have helped to satisfy one’s “need for involvement” by creating this community within the blog realm. A blog makes ordinary people feel like it is the National Enquirer. It is the idea of making “real” people “Celebrities.”