Blog Terminology - a followup
An emailer raises a very good question
- what do you call those who read/comment/participate in blogs?
My original Blog
Terminology post was well received - especially by Google - and an emailer raised a
very good question. What do we call blog
readers?
I agree with her that "readers" sounds very passive, and on major blogs the commenters are as much a part of the blog as the authors. I know specific blogs have names for their followers - the "Kosmonots" or "Kossaks" for Daily Kos, for instance - but I don't know of any general term that encapsulates that idea for all blog readers. Audience is another term that comes close but doesn't quite grasp the reality - falling short by making blogs sound like more of a performance than a dialogue.
Another possible question would be do we even need a term, or will it make sense to have a term in the near future? The trend is increasing as more and more people read, and write, blogs. We don't really have a term for a user of email, or phones, and maybe a term for blog readers is fast becoming unnecessary.
Judging from these statistics (h/t Hughitt), blog readers tend to be more upper class, so maybe we should call them the Blogistocracy? or Blogeousie? These loaded terms might tend to engender misunderstanding, but its actually a nice ironic twist that illustrates the power of blogs to level the playing field - the readers are the blogistocracy, not the bloggers. Rather than feeding information down from a high and mighty (and possibly compromised) source, blogs are a network of distributed reporters bubbling information upwards and constantly tossing aside or clarifying errors. In a powerful symbiosis of information, great blogs have great readers (cf. Powerline, et al. and the takedown of Dan Rather - most of the information being provided to the bloggers by their readers).
So I guess I can't really offer a definitive answer on the issue. I tend to refer to them as "readers" or "audience", and I think we may just have to live with these terms' inability to capture everything we mean. Most people reading this will understand that as readers they are active participants.
Speaking of active participation, if anyone out there has come across a better term, please leave it in the comments or trackback me.
I agree with her that "readers" sounds very passive, and on major blogs the commenters are as much a part of the blog as the authors. I know specific blogs have names for their followers - the "Kosmonots" or "Kossaks" for Daily Kos, for instance - but I don't know of any general term that encapsulates that idea for all blog readers. Audience is another term that comes close but doesn't quite grasp the reality - falling short by making blogs sound like more of a performance than a dialogue.
Another possible question would be do we even need a term, or will it make sense to have a term in the near future? The trend is increasing as more and more people read, and write, blogs. We don't really have a term for a user of email, or phones, and maybe a term for blog readers is fast becoming unnecessary.
Judging from these statistics (h/t Hughitt), blog readers tend to be more upper class, so maybe we should call them the Blogistocracy? or Blogeousie? These loaded terms might tend to engender misunderstanding, but its actually a nice ironic twist that illustrates the power of blogs to level the playing field - the readers are the blogistocracy, not the bloggers. Rather than feeding information down from a high and mighty (and possibly compromised) source, blogs are a network of distributed reporters bubbling information upwards and constantly tossing aside or clarifying errors. In a powerful symbiosis of information, great blogs have great readers (cf. Powerline, et al. and the takedown of Dan Rather - most of the information being provided to the bloggers by their readers).
So I guess I can't really offer a definitive answer on the issue. I tend to refer to them as "readers" or "audience", and I think we may just have to live with these terms' inability to capture everything we mean. Most people reading this will understand that as readers they are active participants.
Speaking of active participation, if anyone out there has come across a better term, please leave it in the comments or trackback me.
Posted: Tue - August 16, 2005 at 08:20 PM | | | | | | |
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Published On: Aug 16, 2005 08:53 PM
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