Pinkie’s Realm

 I enjoyed reading David Kline’s essay “Towards a More Participatory Democracy” in the book Blog! more so than Burtstein’s introduction, because I found it was much more stylistic, and less repetitive. He brought up numerous points from opposing sides and many examples as well. Like Burstein, he discussed the mainstream media, referred to as the “Big Media”, and how blogging may not primarily report the news but rather helps expose the lies of the media. It is too often that our government officials and news reporters tell us things that do not add up–yet the inconsistencies, however, do add up. Although he does not say so directly, Kline apparently believes that the media is extremely misleading and often times, false. I agree with him strongly on this matter. I did however find it interesting to discover just how much of an effect blogs have had on political situations and scandals. I knew it had helped to sway voters’ opinions in the past, but I wasn’t aware of so may specific examples in which thousands of people were led to write letters in protest against politicians who were proven to be hypocrites or liars. Hopefully someday with the help of the general population, I’ll have enough faith and trust in our government to actually vote.

*Bold text  = templates taken from “They Say/I say” By Graff and Birkenstein

After reading Dan Burstein’s introduction, “From Cave Paintings to Wonkette” in his book Blog! (co-written with David Kline), I found that his enthusiam for digital revolution left me both intrigued and skeptical. Though I fully agree with him that blogging is indeed a modern source of more reliable, and trustworthy reports of world news, I don’t believe that it will fully change the world. Blogging and online communication, without a doubt, does have an international effect on the opinions of bloggers and other citizens egarding political matters, as well as the spreading of truth. The fact of the matter is, however, more people are likely to sit down on their couch and watch the TV to hear the news reports rather than search for more credible reports that can be found on the internet. I, more than most people, do not trust the media and believe they omit vast amounts of information, likely due to government intervention. Though I wish  blogging indeed could change the world and spread the truth, I know that the news on television is still the primary source that even bloggers go to, to discuss what they really believe happened.
     And as far as his 12 key ideas are concerned, I do actually agree with most of them. His third key idea however is by far my favorite. He states that, ‘blogging, in addition to being a huge phenomen in its own right, is the key metaphor for interactivity, community-building, and genuine conversation: one to one, one to many, many to one, many to many’. Even in my freshmen year of high school I had an online journal of sorts. I don’t believe any of us called it a ‘blog’ at that time, we just called them ‘online journals’ or something of the sort. Livejournal and Xanga journals were the most popular: they were free, and anyone could join. That way multiple people could interact and read each others posts. Some people used them to record stores and ideas and could even maintain anonymity if they chose to. Soon myspace came along, then facebook with privacy settings. The point is, the internet is now endless. There are so many sources of information and people speaking out, and waiting to be heard, in virtually every way. Maybe blogging can’t change the world for good, but it certainly is making a difference.

I have successfully created a Keene blog for my blogging class. Nice.