After reading Clay Shirky's article
Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality I have gained a new view on the blogosphere. In the article he discusses the power law distribution and how it relates to blogging in that a small percentage of blogs receive the majority of the views. This being said, I don't see that there is anything negative about this fact. Prior to this year I was not a big blogger and it was not until I was introduced to blogging in my class Ideological Media that I became immersed in the blogosphere. Now I find myself going to different blogs everyday to get my news. With my experience in blogging as an example, I would say that my blogging does follow the power law distribution model that Shirky discusses. I do find myself viewing the same blogs everyday and the blogs I do view are those that are the most popular. I was referred to these blogs by fellow classmates and professors and feel that they have been invaluable in me being more informed about what is going on in the world.
I feel that Shirky sees the power law model of blogging as a negative aspect of the industry. Personally though I see nothing wrong with it. I feel that the blogs I view provide me with the best information in the most efficient way. I have looked at other blogs to get my news and did not find them as appealing or as informative. Hence, there is nothing wrong with a small majority of the blogs getting a majority of the views. They are undoubtedly the best blogs and in a capitalist society they will continue to get the most views until a better blog has been developed.
Obviously I have made some contentious points in this blog post and I would love to hear feed-back from you all as to how you felt about this article also.
How do you know they are the best blogs? Is popularity the best judge of quality, particularly when it comes to political, scientific, or factual matters? Or is it possible that popularity and quality are different and require different modes of assessment? What if all your professors were Marxists and only ever recommended Marxist blogs?
ReplyDeleteMore important, though, is not thinking about the matter through the lens of individual preference but for what it tells you about networked communication: that it tends to hierarchies that disadvantage newcomers.