The overarching argument presented in Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs is that the web has merit and should be considered a scholarly resource for study (with a peer review process). Noted is that blogs allow for the possibility of developing new cultural practices of online communication in relation to previously established modes of ownership, authorship, and legitimacy of content and access to information.
Welch may be attempting to resurrect rhetorical studies as a discipline with her application of the 4E’s (Explain it, Enable it, Embed it and Enthymeme it). The validity of this is supported by Mortensen’s explanation of the web initially attracted academic users – almost exclusively. I’ll acknowledge that looking at blogs as rhetorical artifacts allows scholars to examine the ways in which these blogs contribute to changing what it means to communicate online. However, I can’t agree that everything found online has scholarly merit. As a result of its publication model, the proliferation of sub-standard “publications” by “common people” prevails, despite its academic beginnings.
I believe the key attribute of the web is timing. Items can be published to the web much more quickly than a book can be published. To that end, for scholars to keep up – especially those in communication – web resources must carry academic weight.
Timing is also an issue for the news media today and the Frontline series identifies this as one of several challenges impacting the role of the media in U.S, society. From the perspective of the consumer, it’s a great that we have news at our fingertips 24/7 – that we can read a story online (even have it delivered via RSS feeds) and click around all over the web for in-depth coverage – but this is killing our newspapers and television news programs. As evidenced by presentations in our own classroom, the answer – at least right now – is for newspapers and television stations to post enhanced coverage online. This will likely create problems down the road as large corporations lead the convergence parade, but for now it’s working.
References
“News War: What’s Happening With the News.” Frontline. Stephen Talbot, Producer. WGBH, Boston. February 27, 2007.
Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Ed. Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. June 2004. 10 April 2005. <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/>
Gurak, Laura, et al. “Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture.” <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/introduction.html>
Mortensen, Torill Elvira. “Personal Publication and Public Attention.” Into<http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/personal_publication.html>.
Welch, Kathleen Ethel. “Power Surge: Writing-Rhetoric Studies, Blogs, and Embedded Whiteness. <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/foreword.html>