Yep, so finally got my Blogtalk paper away to the conference organisers today. I am pretty nervous as this is so not my scholarly field of research. Oh well! I probably should have discussed the concept of the event and the ‘time of the event’ a bit better, too. Yep… Let’s see what happens. At worst, my paper will be refused.
Title: The Evental Potential of Blogs
Abstract: Something of a blogging ‘noob’, blogs really only came to my attention during the recent 2004 US Presidential Election. The various roles of blogs and bloggers in the election was one of the positive things to come out of this otherwise dire historical episode. What seems to be confused is the impact (if any) of blogs and bloggers on the election. In the specific case of the US Presidential Election, this paper shall argue that the impact of blogs and bloggers on the outcome of the election is only indirect. Blogs allow for immediate, that is, ‘real-time’ social commentary across networks of distributed competencies and this impacted on the production of the television news-based ‘media-event’ of the election. It is possible to witness that blogs, and other forms of New Media in general, have demonstrated they can play a specific role in the modulation of Old Media’s production of a ‘media-event’. This paper has two goals. The first argument shall attempt to locate the role of blogs in relation to the emergence of the media-event of the recent 2004 US Presidential Election. It shall be argued that blogging practice interupts the temporal series of news-media production by Old Media and that it also creates a short-circuit in the feed-back loop between the producers and consumers of the media-event. The second argument is more speculative and stems from the first but places the role of blogging in a much larger and banal context. I use the ‘diagram’ of blogging practice in relation to the 2004 US Presidential Election media-event to think about the relation of blogs and the modulation of everyday events.
Hi Glen, great to meet you last week. Two other factors worth consideration is the role of talkback and PR in the development of “media events”. In the debate about “old media” vs “new media” it’s worth noting that blogs were also used as PR for both campaigns. I have lots of other thoughts too… James
awesome! will have to chat about it over our next round of beers!
when the referrees get back to me (and I have made the expcted required changes!!) I shall have to send you a copy so you can let me know what you reckon about it!!!