The Republic of Letters or The Lone State of Blogistan?
I'm officially on weblog hiatus at the moment but I've been provoked by Karlin Lillington's comments [too long to reproduce in full, but available for your reading pleasure here]
Summarising briefly, and with a great loss of writing style, she has been reflecting on whether her blog is a community (an intercast) or more like a broadcast, and whether it matters.
Normally discussions on blogs about blogs, using words like intercast, show up in my short term memory as "Blahdy blah blah". However, I was struck by her reference to one of the aspects of a blog community which doesn't get a lot of attention. The writers, being such a tiny set of people compared to the number of readers are akin to the pamphleteers of the Enlightenment. They wrote in all the countries of Europe, and declared themselves citizens of the Republic of Letters. But their republic consisted of responding to each other's ideas and arguments. So (at the top level) Thomas Paine wrote the Rights of Man in response to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. In turn, Mary Wollstonecraft responded with The Rights of Women, and so on.
Now blogging hasn't reached that heady level of intellectual effort yet. But it does share the presumption that all the readers have a common grounding, and will recognise certain cultural reference points. What Karlin points out is that this creates a sense of exclusivity, one of the hallmarks of a community. As she says
if this world is now to you, you can feel very out on the edge of things because you have not read Blog Y this week, or what Blog Q says about an item in Blog S. Much like being the new kid in a very clique-y class, where everyone already seems to have friends and belong to various clubs..
What she doesn't mention, probably due to politeness is that all those classroom cliques are quite frequently uninterested in events outside the borders of the US.
She does mention that it should always be borne in mind what a privileged group bloggers are. They have time to write, an education and background that gives them the confidence to do so, and the means to purchase the fantastically expensive equipment which lets them get started.
When the citizens of the republic of letters were writing, they were able to rely on the uniformity of the elite's education across national borders. Latin, French and English were all essential parts of a gentleman's education. They all went on the grand tour or, even if they were only a member of the bourgeois, could read about what you would find as you travelled from those who had come back. Their Republic was an elite, but a determinedly international one.
Blogistan, on the other hand, is generally very recognisable as a State of the US. The Lone * state, say. Those of us who have arrived here with our immigrant cultures face the choice of integrating or remaining separate. We can talk to ourselves, about ourselves, or talk to the wider blog audience, but only about them, it seems.
Those of us not in the US, or trying to interact or attract readers with news from elsewhere (or even ideas from elsewhere) face that barrier and deal with it in different ways.
I've taken to only dipping my toe into most US based blogs, instead hunting down blogs like Tom Fox's Paris which has joined Euronews as my info source for the Continent.
Karlin says she's been in awe of the mega-hit blogs. Generally, I don't think News from Elsewhere could reach that level, because its natural audience is either Irish, (not a huge Net-nation, either in terms of population or computer usage), interested in Ireland, or at least the EU (probably an even smaller category) or likes E. Nesbit (my main growth market, I feel).
Finally, to be part of a community, there should be some significant bit of interchange between bloggers. The Republic of Letters never counted as citizens it supporters, the ordinary people who lapped up their ideas and absorbed them. But it was these people who actually made things happen (see the French Revolution for details). Voltaire wasn't often to be seen marching for bread, but he did provide his readers, or the readers who built on his writing- those who were marching- with the mental tools to realise that the King, rather than the baker, was the cause of prices rising.
My point, such as it is, being that focusing on the people who comment at the bottom of posts (hi there Tom and Steve) misses the invisable majority. And it is the possibility of reaching those people that usually fuels we lowly starter blogger's interest.
(And in Conclusion...) Karlin says that she doesn't think that her site could be particularly interesting to Radio users, as they could get all the links themselves through the aggregator. I disagree. I subscribe to her blog, and so find my way to things she's pointed out as interesting, and avoid having to trawl through the dross to find the diamonds.
Now I really have to stop. But let me know what you think.
11:02:35 AM 
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