“The internet has opened up and improved communications, distribution channels, and transactions in ways which could not have been imagined even at the beginning of the 2000s"

(Akehurst 51-52)

Photo taken in Birmingham, England

The increase in social networking has influenced how people communicate and share information with others (Banyai & Glover 267). If we are to think of the traditional modes of communication, face-to-face interaction or handwritten notes, we can observe how different these modes of communication are in comparison to online communication. For example, face-to-face communication can only be accomplished with those in our current vicinity. Writing and other handwritten artifacts can be distributed to a wider range of people, through letters and postcards that can be mailed to different regions. Writing can also be portrayed in books which can be circulated to stores throughout the world as well. However, both of these mediums require a period of time before they can be received by another party. In comparison, the internet offers a solution to this temporal issue regarding the delay of receiving a message. We are capable of disseminating information, in a global context, with a push of the button that takes a matter of seconds. The internet has not only changed writing and how we distribute information, but has redefined the meaning of a personal diary (Banyai & Glover 274), which many people choose to illustrate through blogs.

In 1997, the term ‘weblogs’ came into being, which has now been abbreviated to ‘blogs’ (Akehurst 52). There are approximately a total of 102 million blogs on the web, with 175 000 new blogs being added each day (Akehurst 54). About 70% of all blogs account for personal journal types (Chen et al. 788). These statistics illustrate how we now turn to the internet as a medium where we chronicle our lives. “The author defines weblogs and the act of blogging as the compilation and construction of lists in relative links, personal commentary, observations and filtering of pertinent web content by the website author" (Pudliner 47) and most importantly, “encompasses social and psychological aspects such as group norms and the personality of the blogger" (Panteli et al. 366). Panteli et al. also state how blogs are hybrid since they include social interaction while simultaneously allowing the bloggers to control their communication space in terms of what and how to write and how frequently they will make contributions to their blog. Blogs can also be interactive by allowing their readers to post comments and give feedback to the writer (Akehurst 54). This comment feature can be seen as similar to the function of a discussion forum, which is all about sharing experience. It is this inclusion of the audience and the bloggers’ consciousness of their audience that introduces the social aspect into the bloggers’ individual thought process (Panteli et al. 365). This hybridity is what makes blogs so different from your typical journal or diary. Journaling is always seen as an individual process where the writer is the only audience. There is this isolated thought process where the writer would not get any feedback on their thoughts, whereas in blogs it is all about sharing information with others.