A defense of blogs - part 1

Back in January, I commented on a newspaper article that took shots at both blogs ("high on opinion and low on fact") and readers of blogs ("getting only the 'daily me'"). In fact negative attitudes about blogs are quite widespread. What's more, predictions are often made that the "fad" of blogging will soon pass.

I'm planning to look at this in three posts. In this one, I'll explore what might be behind these negative attitudes. My second post will defend the blog as a form of communication. And in my third post, I'll try my hand at predicting what the future holds for blogging.

Dissing blogs

The blog of stereotype is truly a thing to be scorned: an online diary packed with inane details of the blogger's life together with uninformed rants—an exhibitionistic ego trip. Admittedly there are plenty of blogs like that. But there are lots of trashy books and magazines and nobody feels the urge to dismiss all books and magazines.

Where does the bad rap come from? I don't think there's a single answer, but here are a few contenders. A straightforward explanation is the Google effect: when people search for information on the Internet, increasingly they are stumbling onto blogs, and often stupid ones at that. An irritating distraction like this is unlikely to leave someone with a good impression of blogs. You can understand this reaction, but it's hardly a sensible way to judge the worth of the whole blogosphere.

A relatively subtle explanation may relate to the difficulty of adequately describing to someone just what a blog is. If you say "It's kind of like an online diary" (a quick but clearly inadequate description), it may perpetuate the notion that blogging is something only an exhibitionist would do.

But I think an authoritarian impulse lurks behind some of the criticism of blogging. Blogs let anyone express their opinions, not just the chosen few. Bloggers don't have to spout opinions that'll please the boss, the advertisers, the market, or the government. Bloggers don't have to express the consensus opinion, or bow to the prevailing fashions. And that makes them a threat.

This is not the first occasion when a new form of communication has threatened the status quo. The introduction of the printing press ushered in the era of mass communication. The revolutionary consequences were soon felt, not the least with the widespread printing of political pamphlets. No longer did the crown and the church have a monopoly on political expression.

Whenever democracy is ascendant, an authoritarian response is not far behind. This is as true today as it was hundreds of years ago. In China, old-fashioned methods are favoured: dissident voices are simply silenced. In the West, there is no need for such a blunt approach. Authoritarian impulses take a more subtle form. Blogs are denounced as frivolous displays of vanity, offering only drivel or perhaps third-rate analysis. Blogs are just a passing fashion, a bandwagon that will soon crest the hill. But perhaps the true offense is something else: the officially sanctioned organs of mass communication have been bypassed, and (gasp!) they might eventually be displaced altogether.

Noam Chomsky has discussed what he calls "the crisis of democracy" (after the title of a report by the Trilateral Commission), namely the perception by elites that there is too much democratization, and I wonder if we're not witnessing something similar. This kind of argument is often dismissed as conspiracy theory, but it's nothing of the sort. I'm not supposing there's a cabal secretly meeting to plan the downfall of blogs (though it would make a great movie). Thought control in our society doesn't require such exotic methods: the threat is far more effectively neutralized by ridicule and marginalization. A few popular mainstream blogs are given the official blessing, and the rest are written off as juvenile nonsense.

Respect for authority and the urge to conform is sufficiently ingrained in our society that a few respected "opinion leaders" can often set the tempo for the rest. Just as the top dogs in the fashion world dictate which colours we should wear this year, a relatively small number of cultural and political sources provide clear guidance on how we should see the world. The last thing they want is to see their influence diluted.