Adam Reed, blogging & agency

Note to self: Though slightly outdated by 2009 standards, Reed provides a decent background to blogging up to 2005. Consult for background chapter.

Reed aims to look at the blog as anthropological text, by focusing on “the ways in which people hold that texts can act as substitutes or extensions of them” [224]. Thinking of text as person, Reed’s argument could fit in well with the idea of blogged self as substitute/simulation – more real than real, it stands in the place of a self that cannot always be truly present (and, given the mediated nature of the self online, this blogged self will only ever be a portion of the ‘true self’ — not that this makes it any less authentic than the offline, physical self, as this self too only ever shows a particular face…). Reed asks a number of questions that are pertinent to my own research, including “Who does it substitute for? How is agency extended? … How is the ‘person’ composed and how does that composition alter over time?” [224].

Reed conducted an ethnographic study of bloggers, using both online and face-to-face interviews in order to gather his data. Speaking of one of his subject’s blogs, Reed notes:

These entries, and the ones I read later, in the following weeks and months, enforced the impression that here was the world as Leo saw it. The weblog appeared to provide a day-by-day account of passing moods and experiences, of his life as it happens. [226].

What Reed is saying here is simply but poignant; a blog has traditionally been a space wherein the author can present their view of the world, as interpreted through their own experiences and ideologies. In my ever-present fear of the corruption of blog culture (through advertising and freebies and what not), I fear that this personalised view of the world might be under threat. Reed voices perfectly the sentiment that I hope all blogs should entail.

Reed goes on to discuss the fact that “the ‘I’ narrative” [226-227] is central to blogging, with the “entity depicted in the digital text” responsible for narrating and perpetuating a coherent (but not necessarily streamlined) whole. The blog and the blogged self are both dynamic, contrastingly starkly with the more “static” representations of personhood found in print and on earlier webpages (227); this dynamism is largely credited to the frequent updating of blogs:

At the heart of journal blogging is an ethos of immediacy. Weblogs entries are meant to be ‘of the moment’, a record of how the individual felt or thought at that particular point in time. The claim that the text and subject can be temporally contiguous relies on the assumption of virtuality, but also on the ease of online publishing that allows posts to be put down on the digital page straight away… the weblog is valued for capturing a person’s impressions almost as they occur. [227]

Reed proceeds to contemplate the status of blog-as-therapy [228], “a means of clearing the mind in order to move a subject’s though processes along”. This concept is analogous to early beliefs such as the Ancient Greek hupomnemata, where it was perceived that a person only had so much room in the mind, and must write down thoughts in order to make room for new learnings, and not forget them in the future. These notes to the self were then used as memory-joggers in the future, a permanent record of previous lessons that could be referred to as needed. A blog operates in much the same way.

There are always aspects of the subject that remain outside or beyond the text, impressions that they cannot or do not want to post. What is censored and why seems to obey no coherent rule…; the most important thing for bloggers is that the claim stands, acting as an implicit defence of their fullness of being… In fact, the digital text is taken to provide a partial version of the subject. [230]

The above quote will tie in nicely with a discussion of symbolic interactionism and performance in chapter four. For Reed, the above provides a tidy opening into the role of audience in blogging. Reed argues that “As well as drawing out the ways in which the digital text substitutes for the ‘I’ of the blogger, individuals are concerned to explore how it mediates between persons after publication” [230]. The blog, as public document, is received in different ways online, and has the potential to be remediated easily – as re-postings on other people’s blogs, or even in the way that it is interpreted and regarded. The blogger must be aware that the self they present online via their blog is the only version of that self that many of their readers will ever encounter. This provides a double-edged sword situation: on the one hand, bloggers may try not to offend or shock their readership, in order to avoid controversy (as an example). On the other hand, doesn’t this censored version of self imply deceit of the audience? Reed later mentions, however, that “the most important visitor to the text is the blogger… this document is produced so a subject can view himself or herself in a mediated form, exteriorised as text” [231]. There is something inherently exhibitionist about the blogger, though:

She compared weblogs to the graffiti that one finds across the city, texts left for strangers to read… the blogger was like someone who leaves scrawled notes on park benches and inside telephone boxes, or who tacks postcards to the front doors of public buildings. [232]

Reed also considers the reasoning behind blogging (i.e. using a public document to record one’s history) and a more private diary [233]. Undoubtedly, the public nature of a blog leads to more editing than one would perhaps employ in a traditional diary, and yet the potential for feedback and the knowledge that someone is hearing your voice are unparalleled.

NB: Discussion of celebrity bloggers (236-238) might be relevant to part 5 of chapter 2?

Texts to consult:

Gell 1986. Writing Culture.

Reference:

Reed, A. (2005). “‘My blog is me’: Texts and persons in UK online journal culture (and anthropology).” Ethnos v.70 n.2