A bit about Blogs and the Public Sphere

Kevin had asked me in tutorial to provide the link to a very well-written article that I had read last semester concerning the ideals of Jurgen Habermas and his notion of the Public Sphere, surrounding the idea of the Weblog. Unfortunately, Project MUSE has refused to re-divulge that particular piece of writing, but instead has given me a couple more that may allow those who are unfamiliar with the terminology to gain some understanding. Under each heading is a short quote that I've picked out that are relevant to our understanding, but if you wish to read the complete article, feel free to do so. Unfortunately, they don't all contain relevant things, only snippets, or are too heavy-laden for the brand new user of the terminology.



Cybersalons and Civil Society: Rethinking the Public Sphere in Transnational Technoculture
In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas presents the salons of eighteenth-century France as instances of the newly emerging bourgeois public sphere. There, bourgeoisie, nobles, and intellectuals only recently removed from their plebeian origins met on equal footing. As Habermas writes, "In the salon the mind was no longer in the service of a patron; 'opinion' became emancipated from the bonds of economic dependence." The salon provided a space apart from the economy, a space where people could exchange ideas and voice criticism on matters of shared interest or concern. The vitality of the exchanges was such that new works and great minds first sought legitimacy in the salons. (¶4)


You Can't Spill Mustard on a Blog
A blog, with apologies to Swedish lumberjacks, is a contraction sans apostrophe of the words 'Web' and 'log.' The word refers to an electronic diary (some prefer to call it a journal) that one may keep, situated on the Internet for the perusal of interested parties. Just like a book or article, it's there, regardless of whether or not anyone cares to read it. Blogging (the act of creating, maintaining, and updating a Web log) is, in effect, self-publishing; and, because you usually have to pay somebody for it (maybe a server, but I'm not really up on the lingo of the cybernauts), blogging is somewhat akin to vanity publishing. (¶5)