How Blogging Has Changed the Way We Communicate and Collaborate

In this article, I will present three key ways that are centred around why, since Web 2.0, blogging has changed how we communicate and collaborate in ways people can better express themselves. The early days of the Web were during an era of low bandwidth and predominantly static pages. The term blogging itself is the practice of publishing user generated content like a journal-style format that can be easily updated and commented on. Blogs today are used widely across diverse geographies to locate information, create, and share content, initiate conversations, collaborate and interact with others. (Dumova & Fiordo, 2012).

New blogging platforms like WordPress, LiveJournal, Tumbler and Blogger to name a few, gave people with little or no technical knowledge of html the ability to blog and publish on the web. In essence, the introduction of Web 2.0 gave the ability to take part, contribute information and have an audience potentially for anything, that anyone who wanted to start and write a blog wanted to say. The average citizen has more opportunities now than ever before to share, create, remix and contribute online. Early adopter Blood, (2000) states Web 2.0 and blogging have transformed power of weblogs to transformed both writers and readers from "audience" to "public" and from "consumer" to "creator."

By making blogs more accessible to the consumer Web 2.0 and blogging have changed how we communicate and collaborate in ways people can express themselves, build communities and contribute to news, events and topics that are important to them.

Let’s start with self-expression, as blogs and blogging has changed how people communicate and collaborate by giving people a platform to express themselves. The ability to blog was a significant time of transformation in Web 2.0. Blogging opened the doors to a space where most people who are positioned as consumers and purely as readers, to a time where anyone with access to a computer and the internet can become creators to communicate ideas and collaborate with like-minded people on topics of interest, news, and events. Blood (2000) shared on her blog that shortly after starting one of the first female blogs, Rebecca’s Pocket, on Web 2.0 she discovered her own interests and valued more highly her own point of view that her perspective was unique and important.

As part of our social, cultural, economic, and political growth, for over 25 years now, the web has become an integral part of our everyday lives (Brugger & Milligan, 2019). Since the inception of the web, however, it was the shift from a read-only web to a two-way read-and-write web that allowed for a different type of collaboration through user-generated content and contribution via blogging that was the catalyst for one of the most significant changes in the induction of Web 2.0.

Through blogging, we have seen the embodiment of self-expression and one of the most critical developments in the history of the web (Brugger, Milligan and Siles, 2019). An example of the worldwide popularity of blogging, self-expression, communication, and collaboration at large was in 2006 when Time Magazine named their Person of the Year as 'You'. The accolade recognised that people were increasingly becoming writers and creators themselves. Alongside politicians, entrepreneurs, activists and religious leaders, this recognition from Time Magazine acknowledged the impact of Web 2.0 and the millions who were communicating collaborating and contributing content. Ultimately, through mediums like blogging, Time Magazine recognised that what we were reading was more of what the average person was creating, not the resident expert.

The ease and accessibility of blogging has given freedom of thought and self-expression to many who would not have otherwise been able to prior to the evolution of Web 2.0. Now that I have discussed how blogging has changed how people communicate and collaborate through self-expression, I'll talk about how blogging and bloggers are now able to develop and build communities.

A direct result of the extent to which blogging has changed the way people communicate and collaborate, is the ability for blogging and bloggers to build strong, loyal and like-minded communities. Permitting people to engage, make connections, maintain conversations, share ideas and collaborate, blogs and blogging is an excellent vehicle for building communities (Dumova & Fiordo, 2012). Similar to community-building social networks, collaborating through blogs can signify that two bloggers know each other through linking-building. By linking to each other’s work, they may also indicate that they like and respect each other's points of view and perspectives on their respective blog posts.

Mainstream social networks generally are centred around family, friend, and colleague connections and not necessarily around like

mindedness in the way a blog will attract a community. A blogger’s ability to attract an audience is through topical interest and pure information gathering. (Rettberg, 2008). Rettberg goes on to describe the other power of blogging, that helps a blog build community, search engines. Optimising a blog post for search with keywords and phrases increases the chances of your blog being more visible to the right people.

An example of this is my own blogging endeavours. When I started my tourism training business, my blogging efforts allowed me to build a community by using the medium to communicate and collaborate consistently. In the early days of launching my blog, I posted a blog once a week for an entire year. The key topics I enjoyed writing about were tourism and digital marketing. In every blog post, I ensured I linked to other tourism blogs and other marketing leaders and businesses I admired. Furthermore, I tagged the most recent article with keywords that will enable my blog to display on the first page of Google for anyone searching for the exact keywords and themes I wrote about in my blog. Like a matchmaking service, this practice would match what a user searched for to a blog I directly wrote and optimised for a this type of query.

An example is someone searching on Google for 'Instagram tips for business, and my blog post Top 10 Reasons Why Instagram is Important for Your Business (Karatzias, 2019) displays as a solution. By keeping my readers in mind, I used search engine optimisation to help lead people that searched for my type of content to my blog. At this point, if they found the blog helpful, there was an opportunity to become part of my online community by either subscribing to my newsletter or joining my social media community where I shared future blogs. As stated by Rettberg (2008) bloggers don’t simply write for the sake of writing. They write instead with a clear expectation of having a reading community and that is an important way a blog facilitates communication and collaboration while building a community of readers interest in the blog topic and theme.

Whilst we have covered community building as a way blogging has changed how we communicate and collaborate, we now look at how blogging has allowed us to contribute to news, society, and culture.

Blogs, the act of blogging and bloggers can do important things when contributing information about current events, as journalists do. With everyday citizens having blogging capability before Web 2.0, what would have gone unnoticed can now be shared. The rise of smartphone usage contributing to news and events has dramatically changed how people can contribute to communicating important information and collaborating in the dissemination of the latest news and events. The potential of increased contribution aids how we communicate and disseminate information across the web, mainly when people use political and societal engagement through blogging platforms.

Dumova and Fiordo (2012) describe network-based peer production and blogging platforms as they continue to evolve as new modes of content production, demonstrating their growing power to communicate and increase the influence of accessible online distribution channels. Surowiecki (2015), in his Ted Talk, The power and the danger of online crowds, reflects on the moment when social media and bloggers became equal players in the world of newsgathering to collaborate and offer collective intelligence during the 2005 devastating tsunami in Thailand.

An example of this is people documenting things on the spot on mobile phones or mobile blogging, a precursor to a popular photo sharing site, Instagram, the immediacy of sharing images, texts, and now video is easily accessible and distributed. In today's journalism landscape, blogs, bloggers and micro bloggers, play a crucial role. In essence, bloggers can report on news faster than traditional media providing real-time accounts, amendments, or clarifications about something written in the conventional media. 'An army of local journalists enters, producing enormous amounts of material for no reason other than to tell their stories.' (Surowiecki, 2008, 8.42)

User-friendly blogging interfaces also allow bloggers to make observations that may have been missed and use their blogging platform to communicate and collaborate with others on their points of view. An example of this was independent freelance writer Riley (2016), who blogged about her observation of the unfair treatment publicly aired from leading sports commenter Eddie McGuire and called out his on-air behaviour towards his female colleague Caroline Wilson by writing and sharing about it. It reached mainstream media and as a result, Mr McGuire publicly apologised to Ms Wilson.

Another example of this change in how we communicate and collaborate is the contribution via blogging and Web 2.0 that would not otherwise have been captured and shared on mainstream media. The story of a young Iraqi man, Salam Pax, who shared his accounts via a blog, giving a unique perspective into what life was like in Baghdad under Sadam Hussein's government. The blog garnered so much interest that the blog entries converted into a book titled Salam Pax: The Baghdad Blog. Salam Pax is one of thousands of stories of an active citizen actively participating to share and contribute stories that, complements journalistic endeavours.

As noted earlier, by making blogs more accessible to the consumer Web 2.0 and blogging have changed how we communicate and collaborate in ways people can express themselves, build communities and contribute to news, events and topics that are important to them.

In this essay I have stated the most significant transformation that came with the evolution of Web 2.0 and blogging. Blogs and the practice of blogging has most certainly changed how we communicate and collaborate giving people the opportunity to express themselves in ways they were not able to before, build communities like they were not able to before and contribute to society with an immediacy like never before Web 2.0 came to fruition.

References:

Dumova, T., & Fiordo, R. (Eds.). (2012). _Blogging in the Global Society: Cultural, Political and Geographical Aspects_. IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60960-744-9

Blood R. (2000) weblogs: a history and perspective.

http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html

Rettberg J. Blogs Communities and Networks.; 2013.

Niels Brügger, & Ian Milligan. (2019). _The SAGE Handbook of Web History_. SAGE Publications Ltd. https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzE5NDI4NDJfX0FO0?sid=83677483-5b62-4e0f-8e40-04472b0fc949@redis&vid=0&format=EB&lpid=lp_v&rid=0

You (_Time_ Person of the Year), Wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_(Time_Person_of_the_Year)#:~:text=%22You%22%20was%20the%20official%20choice,other%20websites%20featuring%20user%20contribution.

Karatzias, D (2019, March 5). 10 Reasons why Instagram is important for your business https://www.instituteofexcellence.com/10-reasons-why-instagram-is-important-for-your-business/

Karatzias, D (2019, March 5). 10 Reasons why Instagram is important for your business https://www.instituteofexcellence.com/10-reasons-why-instagram-is-important-for-your-business/

Surowiecki, J. [Ted]. (2008, Nov 6). The power and the danger of online crowds [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Xm4ufnoxY

Riley, E. (2016, June 19). Eddie McGuire, Caroline Wilson and violence against women: the AFL must act http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2019/01/why-our-citation-practices-make-no-sense.htm