A Blog As A Form Of Narrative?
Web Logs, or "Blogs" can be described as a kind of on-line journal or diary. There are many different types of blogs that have different uses but the most common one is definitely the diary blog. Anyone with access to the internet can create a blog and most are open to any comments from readers, but can they really be considered a form of narrative? As they are so easy to create, and not subject to any scrutiny by editors and/or publishers like a novel is, it could be argued that what is written in a blog is not worthy of being classed as a serious work of narrative fiction. While this may be true about some of them, many bloggers manage to create compelling reading that is followed by millions of people around the world, people who log on everyday to read about the latest drama in the life of a person they do not know. Most blogs are very mundane, for example, http://this-chick.com/, written by a girl known only as 'Sarah,' is about extremely ordinary things such as the fact that on the 10 January 2006 she applied for a passport. Yet it is our ability to look into the everyday lives of complete strangers like this that makes a blog such a compelling form of narrative and often more interesting than a book. In this increasingly technological age it seems only fitting that narratives are being created for the internet, and blogs are just one of many. Rob Wittig (2003) argues that "the blog is the most substantial and complete literary form indigenous to the web" And it would seem that this opinion is shared by many as the blog continues to grow in popularity and sets itself a place in the definition of digital narrative.
Web Logs, or "Blogs" can be described as a kind of on-line journal or diary. There are many different types of blogs that have different uses but the most common one is definitely the diary blog. Anyone with access to the internet can create a blog and most are open to any comments from readers, but can they really be considered a form of narrative? As they are so easy to create, and not subject to any scrutiny by editors and/or publishers like a novel is, it could be argued that what is written in a blog is not worthy of being classed as a serious work of narrative fiction. While this may be true about some of them, many bloggers manage to create compelling reading that is followed by millions of people around the world, people who log on everyday to read about the latest drama in the life of a person they do not know. Most blogs are very mundane, for example, http://this-chick.com/, written by a girl known only as 'Sarah,' is about extremely ordinary things such as the fact that on the 10 January 2006 she applied for a passport. Yet it is our ability to look into the everyday lives of complete strangers like this that makes a blog such a compelling form of narrative and often more interesting than a book. In this increasingly technological age it seems only fitting that narratives are being created for the internet, and blogs are just one of many. Rob Wittig (2003) argues that "the blog is the most substantial and complete literary form indigenous to the web" And it would seem that this opinion is shared by many as the blog continues to grow in popularity and sets itself a place in the definition of digital narrative.