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Appendice 1
A
Short Introduction to Weblogging
One of the swiftest growing realms on the internet in the past year has been in the area of personal weblogging, especially amongst youth. According to the Perseus Weblog Survey, teenagers have created the majority of blogs, 92.4% of all weblogs have been created by people under the age of 30, with 51.5% (2 120 000 blogs) created by 13-19 year olds, and 1.3% (55 500 blogs) created by 10-12 year olds.[1]
Blogs are "a cross between an online journal and a
list of commented links."[2] The writer, also known as a
"blogger" of a "blog" uses a weblog program (Blogger,
Moveable Type, Xanga, and LiveJournal seem to be the most popular ones) to
write and edit their blog entries. A
blog is either stored online on the weblog program's server, or on the
blogger's own personal webspace.
Weblogs are most often run by one writer, but there are also blogs
written by a collective group of bloggers as well.
A blog usually consists of daily or
very frequent entries, and a sidebar of links that the blogger has chosen. The links list, often called a
"blogroll," usually reveals the community the blogger interacts
in. The blogroll may include the blogs
of friends, blogs of people the blogger does not know in real life, music sites,
game sites, and various other internet sites the author finds of interest.
The entries, or posts, contained
within a blog can either be wide-ranging or narrowly focused, usually whatever
interests the author.[3] Weblogs often consist of personal entries of
the daily activities of the author, daily thoughts and musings, quotations, and
the like. They also usually contain
links of interest to the blogger within the text of the entries.
A weblog generally takes the form of
a long page for a week or month, with new entries added to the top of the page.[4] Thus, the blog is presented in
reverse-chronological order. This is
designed so that a frequent visitor to the blog will see the most recent entry
first, at the top of the page. Some
blogs only have one entry per page, so whenever the blog visitor visits the
weblog address they only see the most current entry, but can follow links to
see older entries.
Entries in a weblog are commonly
archived and are available through a link on the side or at the bottom of the
webpage. Thus, it is possible to read
somewhat of a complete diary of the author up until the current day starting at
the date they started their blog.
Rebecca Blood, in her essay
"Weblogs: A History and Perspective," identifies two types of
weblogs. The first original type of
weblog was focused primarily on linking via html to other places on the world
wide web. The weblog writer would
present links or excerpts from articles found on the web and provide a
commentary of sorts. However, the
introduction of Blogger in 1999, today
one of the world's most popular online blogging webspace tools and blogspace
providers, changed the face of weblogging.
While "original" blogs still exist, original blogs being ones
that provide weblinks and comments on news or websites, this original type of
weblog has been eclipsed by the daily personal journal weblog.[5]
The daily personal journal weblog is less of a commentary
on news and websites with links and more of a record of a blogger's thoughts
and reflections. These newer journal
blogs are as varied in content as the individual authors are. Entries can talk about anything from how the
blogger's day went, commentary on the movies or tv shows he or she has recently
watched, writing directed at a specific person, poetry, lyric quotes from
favourite songs, to talk about relationships or family and beyond.
Weblogs often incorporate commenting systems such as those
provided by Haloscan and Enetation into their posts, at the end of an entry a
blogging program automatically provides a link for readers to leave their
comments. Commenting systems facilitate
and allow conversations to take place.
Through these commenting systems and cross-linked blogs of fellow
webloggers, bloggers meet each other and dialog. Bloggers find other blogs that they like to read, and converse
with the authors. They link. They comment. They even sometimes email and instant message each other. Community forms. As author and weblog historian Rebecca Blood notes, it is "fascinating to see new bloggers
position themselves in this community, referencing and reacting to those blogs
they read most, their sidebar an affirmation of the tribe to which they wish to
belong."[6]
The
online virtual community that has been formed via weblogging has come to be
called the "blogosphere."[7] Weblogs, and the blogosphere as a whole,
foster the exchange of ideas, critical thought, the sharing of personal lives,
and, importantly, cultivate relationships.
The online presence of individual Christians is growing through
the continual increasing numbers of webloggers, and through this, the
opportunity for relational ministry is growing. Currently Blogs4God,
"a semi-definitive list of Christian blogs”, has 986 blogs listed.[8] 986 is not a large number, but not all
Christian bloggers have registered with Blogs4God, however it is the largest
Christian bloglist on the internet.
In October 2003 it was estimated that there were 4.12 million blogs that had been created on the eight most popular blog service providers[9] by the Perseus Weblog Survey.[10] The survey also estimated that by the end of 2003 the number of hosted weblogs would exceed five million, and by the end of 2004 they would exceed ten million.[11]
Although the number of blogs may exceed ten million by the end of this year, not all of these weblogs are active. The Perseus Corporation found in it's study that 66% of the blogs it surveyed had not been updated in two months, and 1.09 million blogs were one day wonders.[12] Most weblog providers do not yet delete inactive blogs like email service providers delete inactive accounts. The NITLE Blog Census, an ongoing project that attempts to find as many active weblogs as possible across all languages, had found 1 705 102 sites it thought were likely weblogs as of February 2, 2004.[13] Technorati, a service that tracks who links to whom, also lists a similar number at 1 753 116 weblogs.[14]