MonsterMedia

Sept. 2003

MonsterMedia - monstrosity in the face of weblogs

Abstract

My paper is trying to setup the grounds for researching the newly established blogosphere and the media culture in general in terms of cultural practices vis a vis the new phenomenon. Martijntje Smits theory on how society reacts on new technologies forms the basis of the research on weblogs. Her Ñpragmatic monster-ethics” outline social and cultural reaction in view of the emergence of new technologies. My paper elaborates on weblogs, the blogosphere and its practice of linking as new technologies and techniques of content creation that challenge our established public media space.

On the grounds of this outline the discourse within the blogosphere as well outside of it will be researched.

MonsterMedia - monstrosity in the face of weblogs [1]

by Thomas N. Burg, Danube University Krems, http://randgaenge.net

New media always call for an accurate specification.[2] The reason being is that “new” always refers to a historical perspective. Weblogs[3] have been a hybrid development for the past 5 years that can be described as a technological development and style of writing or better producing content and connecting people. Thus, weblogs represent one of the latest developments in the field of new media publishing. Briefly summarized, weblogs represent a publication format that bears a strong resemblance to diaries or log books. They are based upon an efficient content-management-system and they promote the formation of social networks on the Internet by means of hyperlinks[4]. It is estimated that there are currently circa 3 to 4,5 million registered users with differing regional distributions.[5]

Since the emergence of blogs on the awareness-horizon, a vivid discussion has spawned about definition, sense, usage, durability, propagation, dangers and opportunities connected with their existence. Therefore, there is discourse now that describes the arrival of a new cultural shape in an archetypical way. Something new has appeared at the periphery of web-publishing, that is the social space Internet. This paper aims at developing a framework that allows for the description of cultural reactions of a society and especially parts of the society like the sciences in respect to new, digital web-based methods of expression as seen from a cultural studies perspective.

The initial basis is provided by the dissertation “Exorcising monsters: the cultural domestication of new technologies”[6] by Martijntje Smits and respectively an essay based upon her assumptions[7].

The focal point of the dissertation is based upon the notion of monster - that is upon the thesis that a monster unifies two incompatible sides within itself (e.g. human parts and inorganic and/or animalistic ones) or is synonymous for perceived impurity - with investigating cultural norms and types of behavior in the light of ‘monstrous’ challenges. The monster is provided its characteristics due to the fact that our collective cultural categories that allow for an understanding of the world in the first place, do not permit classification. This implies that monsters will continue to exist forever or at least up until our civilization is based on cultural categories.[8]

In this essay the attempt is undertaken to utilize Smits’ thesis with the phenomenon of the weblog, that of blogopshere and respectively of technique und culture of linking and networking of content. The question, however is: Are weblogs, the blogosphere or respectively links and their effects perceived as monsters and if that is the case, which cultural categories do they surpass or blend? Or to put it the other way round if one can observe the cultural reactions that Smits describes is that the evidence of something monstrous.[9]

Smits attempts to extend, through her theses, the cultural learning process in a creative way by tracing back the blind spot of technology-ethics-discussions, the communication between technologists and users and by secularizing the myth. Between the argument of lacking rationality and the violation of nature a mediator can be found, namely the monster in which is being analyzed by Smits.

The objective is to initiate a learning process that enables the appropriation of new digital media in a creative manner - according to Smits it is in fact through “pragmatic monster-ethics”, which is also through adapting technologies (software) to the needs of the users.

At this point the attempt is undertaken to trace back the technologists and users debate to its roots via taking a look at one fragment of the technological progress within the field of new media.[10] The intention is to open the dialogue between the involved parties with an optimization process in mind. The learning process should involve technologists or in our case software desingers and developers and the users to collaboratively create usable applications. This way a tehcnology determinism is replaced with mutual influence.

1. Culture and monster

1.1 Risks involved with new technologies

Smits’ theses are based on the risk-perception as it pertains to new technologies. However, new digital media are generally not perceived as venturous, at least not in the same extent as compared to technologies connected to gene manipulation, nuclear power etc. Although I do think that there is a cultural level that confronts new digital media with culturally passed on forms of communication and the production or respectively the marketing of communication; even though it is more subtle it is not less upsetting especially thinking of it in the sphere of sciences be it as object of research or as method of communication. The majority of communication products have been historically distributed by gatekeepers, that is to say that the users were only presented with a selection. The field of new digital media focuses on the shift toward so-called user-driven communication products. In accordance with the situation of the individual users new communication products can be developed. An example would be for instance a news aggregator[11] that makes the contents of other pages available and enables for a further processing of these contents by the user. Another example would be the aggregation of waypath[12]-generated links that can be compiled into one document. Waypath crawls specific servers looking for posts that contain similar concepts of the post that implements this plugin. If there is something similar available links, then name of the source and ther first signs are displayed.

In the end, aspects of power and authority of the public and that of the economy are included as well. The risk in this case is a more subtle one, but nonetheless a political one.[13] Therefore, I propose that similar patterns can be observed in both cases.

In respect of the Internet, the Web and on a smaller scale in respect to weblogs and the blogosphere two polarizing reactions that give room for the monster-analysis can be perceived.

a)The liberation of the individual as author/producer, as well as the direct networking(link) and evasion of intermediators (also censors), creation of a new economy in terms of a Californian Ideology.[14]

b) Mass production and banalizing of content (quantity instead of quality), danger for culture through stupefying, violation of copyrights.

It is further necessary to determine the fileds that are particularily active in either way. Possible fields in question are: journalism, science, bloggers, evangelists, developper.

What is the reasoning behind the utopia-dystopia-syndrome, the euphoria and damning of new digital media? Which patterns can be isolated. Which cultural categories are trangressed? In order to give all participants the possibility to initiate a process according to Smits it is necessary to surpass the blind spot of polarization “[...] the shaping of new socio-technical practices should be under some kind of democratic control”.[15] That means to define the monster or better describe the categories that are challenged.

1.2 Monsters as a cultural category

There are phenomena that are found outside of a socially constructed reality,[16] but that confront this reality at the same time. If they cannot be categorized or sometimes belong to two mutually exclusive categories then they are leaving room for fantasy and result according to Smits into four archetypical reactions of a given culture and its protagonists toward the monstrous.

- Elimination of the monster

- Adaptation of the monster

- Assimilation of the receiving culture and of the monster

- Apotheosis of the monster

The first two cases represent a rigid reaction; the extant culture rejects the new and subsequently destroys it. In the second case it means the society changes the new that it fits into existing categories. In our case that would mean for instance to describe weblogs as nothing else than a variante of email and messageboard.[17]

In the third case the new is seen not as a danger, but rather as an opportunity; both sides approach one another and integrate.

The apotheosis is about the blind glorification of the other, that of the monstrous involving all fantasies about salvation and only a variation of the first case, namely an uncritical, un-reflected interaction with the other.

I would like to excursively try to utilize Smits’ thesis for the phenomenon of weblogs/blogosphere respectively the culture and techniques of personal publishing filtering of contents and connecting to people by the means of weblogs and the tools available.[18]

2. Weblogs - Monsters of the network, the network of a monster

The monstrous challenge through weblogs is evoked - a multitude of attempts exists to define or attest this - (analog to Ton’s thesis in the field of knowledge management) through the paradigm-shift in the area of personal publishing and interactive networks. Consequently, we do not only encounter a new way of content-creation, but rather to a much higher extent a new form of networking of individual nodes. Nodes do not refer to individual websites any longer that can be activaed through the URL, and this is the real new aspect to me, but rather to the individual posting or weblog entries. This paradigm-shift from page to posting[19] involves an enormous potential of reciprocal connectivity on a micro-content-basis[20] insofar as it is now possible to refer permanently to specific contents that reside within in a page; Weblog-Tools such as Trackback[21] or Pingback[22] increase the awareness. This connectivity requires however new navigation instruments that enable location in respect to content, but particularly in a social aspect - Technorati (www.technorati.com) and Waypath (www.waypath.com) or Blogdex (www.blogdex.com) are important ones.

According to the emergence theory, the nets woven in this manner create an emergent intelligence that is more than the sum of all individual postings, authors or weblogs[23]. In such a sphere we do not have to struggle against Information Anxiety (to know that there is more information than one disposes of altogether or at the moment), but against the fact to be disconnected from the Net and its intelligence and social relations - Interaction Anxiety[24].

A world where fluidity of interaction with information will be at least as important as information itself. A world where we will fear being cut off from the network, with the resulting inability to access our sources of knowledge. A world of interaction anxiety.[25]

The access to this emergent intelligence becomes a central aspect. The monstrous now is the junction of human and technical aspects, as well as the perception that there is an intelligence out there that is independent of me as a component and that cannot be controlled centrally and for exactly this reason becomes intelligent. An intelligence based upon interaction, being able to also consult the right source (the bibliographic knowledge not the encyclopedic one) concerning social, as well as informational capital. The process of looking for advice becomes then the activation of a network composed of the same extent of humans and machines.

Let us go back one step again and regard the modifications in the area of the production means of communication processes.

3. Production Methods

We essentially observe a technically enabled emancipation of the individual from the mass of consumers toward the producer. Professional tools of production (weblog-software and webspace) are available for little expenditure; the gatekeepers (agencies, publishing houses, companies, authorities) can be bypassed. At the same time this results into a redefining of production techniques.

3.1 Re-Emergence of authorship

The author as revenant[26] quasi some sort of monster becomes, again, the center of the production process. It positions itself as a quasi paradox intervention on a spot where the media theoretical discourse had proclaimed the author’s death behind mighty hypertext-structures.[27], [28] Reputations-systems[29] form between Information Overload and Attention Economy[30] that function as authors and entities of relevance and quality control of the Internet separately from mechanical control installations. Trust[31] as a category of a new media public can be found as well in the debate concerning embedded-journalists in the context of the Iraq war, as well as alternative-reporting via a weblog. Weblogs or respectively their authors represent some kind of a human data-mining-junction. The filtering process and algorithms, of the search engine Google, that are involved with it represent a digital world that reverts to human categories as the very basis of relevance sorting.[32] This does not necessarily involve real existing individuals even though this attribute may endow a special insignium of authenticity and as a result appear more trustworthy. In an era of the mass, at the same time, not surprisingly, the individual emerges again. The author, whether he/she, real or only imagined[33] guarantees quality for such an overflow of hypertext on the Internet.

3.2 Becoming creative

One of the relevant and widespread creative activities of a blogger is the filtering of information and data contained on the Internet. At first glance only as a secondary appearing feature that parasitically processes the intellectual performances of others. However, if the knowledge space is only considered as a communicative action the role of the filter appears in a very different light. She gains importance as a creative and coordinating agent.

In the study of literature a literature theory formed in the 1960s, namely the Aesthetics of Reception or Reader Response Theory according to Hans R. Jauþ and Wolfgang Iser, which entered the scene as a mediator between artifact and user quasi as a third path between production aesthetics (social reality) and textual aesthetics (textual structures). “Nicht das Werk, sondern der kommunikative Akt kennzeichnen den ”sthetischen Gegenstand.”[34] Thus it is not about delivering goods but about appropriating them.

Reader Response Theory already referred to the act of reading (establishing connections and links), supplementing empty spaces (nodes) as basically a productive act, in the case of weblog based production we are confronted with a more literal transformation of the passive recipient to the active producer. Additionally to the two basic modalities of production also a third one emerges, namely that of filtering. One of the relevant intellectual performances is the integration of information in already existing concepts of knowledge and experience. An elementary module along the way proves to be filtering information and data. Filtering is here seen as attributing relevance and the addition of meta data to previously mainly decontextualized information. This refers to a nearly routine aspect of our everyday culture. In my opinion therefore the monstrous element of weblogs can be seen in their massive support of (previously parasitic) filtering processes because it renders this kind of content creation as a subset of the traditional geniuos principle of content creation. However, we are not yet familiar with the mass networking of individual activities.

A time that is not short of knowledge and information, but that is rather characterized by an overflow (or Information Anxiety) many agents are created that filter the multitude of data, information and of knowledge and add relevance and context to existing information in a subjective manner. This creation of value that can be imagined as an emergent system (Steven Johnson) that is one which is not subjected to a command-and-control- structure and is indeed somehow monstrous because because a coordinating principle at one point is absent.

4. Networks and Public Space

Speaking in public space and that place itself and particularly the space of the media public has always been very well organized, that is in terms of those that rule. The potential danger for traditional structures via weblogs/blogopshere and via its production methods (genuine production and filtering) is located in its mass potential outside of the actual culture.[35] Thus there is room for fantasies in terms of that of which was aforementioned. By the way, fantasies that have been already observed at the beginning of the Internet and the Web.[36]

If we say outside of the established media public, then a look at European history proves to be helpful. The weblogger, BETA|blogger [37] is connected by a historical tangent with the pre-revolutionary Paris of the 18th century. Referring to the historian Robert Darnton he identifies pamphletists as an archetypical weblogger. The revolutionary impetus of blogging is analogously to such understandable as an oppositional proceeding against an established media public.

The un-covering of taboo topics has always functioned as the symbol of such a new media ‘conquering-discourse’.[38] (translated)

Even if the discourse and the gesture of the BETA|blogger is in itself part of a historical appropriation strategy, elementary aspects of the monster and its creation are still addressed: Utopia und dystopia emerge with the advent of a new phenomenon that is on the periphery of webpublishing pops up something new. The identification as a “pamphlet” is part of the monster discourse and at the same time the description of a phenomenon that has not been culturally appropriated - that is not in the center yet and not yet attuned. The analysis of this revolutionary ‘conquering-discourse’ as part of the monster analysis will be undertaken in the future. In conclusion, one more quote that allows as a historical reference for the self-understanding of a blogger.

This one [Louis SÈbastian Mercier in "Tableau de Paris"] develops as one of the first the sensibility of a journalist to perceive and take up exactly that what is happening around him.[39] (translated)

An attribute that fits well as a good reference for discourse in the German speaking blogger scene and that formed around the definition of the term “Gonzo-Blogger”[40]. The established public media however argues for poor quality and a limited angle - depreciatively coined as “navel-gazing”.[41]

The monster however is faced by the four modalities of Smits.

1Elimination of the monster weblog/blogosphre/filter

a) The classical Content-Management-Systems (CMS)-party is depreciating the functionality of weblogs

b) Filtering is regarded as a parasitic act and is perceived as secondary.

c) The format is discounted as private, irrelevant and futile blabber.

d) Quality of relations/content is replaced by quantity, as social capital is being lost. Strong ties are replaced with weak ties[42] which is regarded as a decay.

e) Break up of society into unlinked subcultures, desolidarizing through computer-mediated-communication (CMC)

f) Virtual and real communities do exclude one another.

g) Weblogs are only a niche-phenomenon and therefore irrelevant as an object or field of research

2 Adaptation of the monster weblog/Filter

a) Existing CMS and knowledge-management-systems (KMS) are given a massive weblog-extension

b) Establishing of ontologies

c) The culture of linking experiences ostracism

d) Weblogs are just another version of CMC or messageboard-systems

e) Weblogs are nothing more than colums comparable to traditional media

3 Assimilation

a) We media - exchange/mutuality of professional and private research and commentary.[43]

b) Content und linking practices are made available through new conventions.

c) Social Software is not only a buzzword, but also indicates the interest in social potential of software. That means software that supports the movement away from the isolated desktop (but via desktop) toward linking to other desktops or servers.[44]

d) Integration of free filters with central taxonomies (k-collector, http://k-collector.evectors.it/)

e) Personal annotations that are publicly accessible. In such a way an evaluated network of contextual information is created, that is of knowledge. Additional path of opinion formation.

f) Reconfiguration of the public and the private: at home but still not alone. Communities of interest are person centered minus geographical and timely constraints = “networked individuality”[45]

g) New informal and invisible online social networks are made possible[46]

h) Virtual und real communities do not exclude one another.

4 Apotheosis

a) Political expectations of salvation. Emergent Democracy is the vision of our representative democracy through a weblog-based direct democracy[47], as well as Elwyn Jenkins’ The Emerging Sixth Estate[48] who regards Blogosphere as the sixth estate that is subjected to its own logic and that forms public opinion - as alternative and control to other political powers.

b) Virtual networks replace real ones.

c) Replacing classical journalism through everyday reporters.

d) Social opinion formation on commentary systems and on a RSS-Basis

e) Replacement of CMS and desktop-applications, the human being and its production means are carried out on the Internet.

f) All implicit knowledge becomes explicit and lastingly understandable.

5. Interactive networks, social software und socio-technical capital

Apparently a similar life cycle can be observed in the history of technologies, of all paradigm shifts, thus of the monsters. Most interesting is the point where the monster is taken from the periphery into the center. It will experience alterations just like the center has to perform modifications. This is the most sustainable way of confrontation with the other and the final integration. The original denomination of the monster is often changed in such a way. Just as it seems unlikely for people with pace makers to be referred to as monsters (integration of inorganic substances into an organic surrounding) it is just as likely that the term weblog vanishes increasingly into the background and is replaced by others such as business-journal and the software get modified as well..

That is what the real focus is, being interaction and networking, in which implies that we are still only at the beginning of our itinerary.

In this context the term social software appears, inasmuch as it indicates a social appropriation of software as an umbrella term that fosters increasingly technologically supported social networking via the Internet. Weblogs are a variety of social software that generate knowledge through filtering, social networks in which are based on trust, ultimately public media that is displaced and independent of time zones - even if not entirely.[49] The monsters weblog/blogosphere enter the scene at a time when the decline of passed on social capital is being diagnosed. It is identified as the cause in the context of assimilation or as an utopia as the thesis of replacing traditional forms of social networks through socio-technical capital. Computer-Mediated -Communication (CMC) is a means of initiating and maintaining social relations. The concurrence of ICT and social (reciprocal) relations results for Resnick[50] into the term “socio-technical capital” as a sub-category of social capital. Social software is the reaction to global changes; the Monstrous element finds expression as long as the new and other is pushing from the periphery into the center, if it really does that. According to Resnick[51] socio-technical innovations of the 21st century are counterparts of the answers of the last centuries in response to factories, urbanization and immigration: Boy Scouts, unions and associations.

Weblogs may only be an attempt to depict and organize informal networks, essentially peripheral and emergent. Does it in the end next to traditional networks, create knowledge, identity and work relations into a new network form, that is probably becoming increasingly relevant? If that is the case then along the lines of our cultural perception, the behavior patterns proposed by Smits can be observed at least until the monster does not enter the center or is not eliminated.

The analysis of the emergence and reception of weblogs, of the blogosphere and the software tools involved with it is supposed to depict the historical process of the attuning of a new form of publication by means of the analysis of its discourses and functionalities the so-called latent social software.[52]

Endnotes

1. I would like to extend my gratitude to Ton Zylstra (http://www.zylstra.org/blog/archives/001075.html), who brought my attention to Martijntje Smits’ work, as well as to the entire Blogosphere that has enriched, criticized, challenged and inspired me since I joined in April 2002; it has continued to aid in giving me a previously unknown extent of joy and interest concerning the Web and its habitants and rooms.
2. See (Manovich, Lev, 2001).
3. For this paper I will take only a specific kind of weblogs into consideration. There are different subcultures of weblogs and bloggers on the net. They represent individuals of different age and gender and interests. Some of the demographics are closley related to a specific kind of software or hosted services that is used, For this paper I rely on those weblogs that are (and understand themselves) as filters and commentators and as such they provide external links and a RSS-version of their site that one can subscribe to
4. See (Blood, Rebecca, Dec 2002)
5. See (Wolff, Phil, 2003-)
6. (Smits, Martijntje, 2002)
7. (Smits, Martijntje, 2002)
8. See (Smits, Martijntje, 2002), 8.
9. Compare the metaphorical use of the notion of the monster in the interview of Glenn Reynolds see (Lydon, Christopher 2003)
10. See (Smits, Martijntje, 2002), 1.
11. See (Winer, Dave, Jun 2002) the newsaggregator collects subscription of an arbitrary numer of pages by pulling the changes on these site directly to the aggregator. Thus like agents the keep an eye on changing contents and deliver it to the user. The user can decide which sources appear in his “inbox” cancellation operates immediately.
12. See (Waypath, 2002).
13. See (Hargittal, Eszter 2002), Hargittai analyzes different types of utilization of the Internet that is the media competence and the ability to utilize networks. Aside from different prerequisites concerning the existence of access to new media different competencies are also becoming an increasingly relevant topic.
14. (Barbrook, Richard, Cameron, Andy).
15. (Smits, Martijntje 2002), 3.
16. See (Berger, Peter L., Luckmann, Thomas 2000), see also here http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/sowi/kovo9798/psdiet.htm.
17. An interesting attempt to visualize such a comparison can be found at Web Dawn, a blog that offers it contens also in forum view thus relating those two different genres somewhat.
18. Ton Zijlstra utilizes now these theses toward the acceptance of knowledge management in general. See. (Zylstra, Ton, 2003)
19. See (Hourihan, Meg 6/13/2002).
20. It is important to acknowledge that there are many weblogs on the web that are not filters and that network on another basis. I will focus in this paper, however, on the ones that are linking.
21. See (Trott, Ben und Mena).
22. See (Langridge, Stuart; Hickson, Ian, 2002).
23. See (Johnson, Steven 2001), see ad emergence theory also here http://www.information-philosophie.de/philosophie/emergenz.html .
24. See (Sergio, Fabio 2002)
25. See (Sergio, Fabio 2002).
26. See (Ruthner, Clemens, 1990).
27. Also at this point I would like to thank (Heidegger, Gerald, BETA|blogger 2003) who made the author reappear on my radar as the entity of the ‘conqueror - discourse’ of Blogosphere.
28. See (Mason, Jean S., 2000)
29. (Resnick, Paul 2001), p.?
30. See. (Goldhaber, Michael 1997)
31. See (Fukuyama, Francis, 1995).
32. The internet search-engine Google (www.google.com) creates its index of webpages to a large extent on it popularity ranking. That means a webpage is more important depending on the number of inbound links.
33. “Author” refers to a certain trademark on the Web that collects texts on the net under its name [...] The successful promotion of Weblogs (connected to a distribution of software that predestines every layman to a media producer on the Internet) may indicate a change of structures within media public at the beginning of the 21st century where the principle of authorship plays a considerable part in creating publicity. (BETAblogger 2003).
34. (Pflugmacher, Torsten 2002)
35. Compare in this case the metaphor of the “Narco News Swarm” that has and will overhaul tradional media see (Giordano, Al 2003)
36. See (Coates, Tom 2003)
37. See (BETAblogger 2003)
38. (BETAblogger 2003)
39. (BETAblogger 2003)
40. See (Kris, Jun 2003). This neologism accounts for a style of blogging that sets itself apart from news- and content-filtering thus promoting the ‘original’ (a somewhat romantic version of the idea of the genius) creation of content. At this point it ist to mention, however, that this is my personal opinion further research in the meaning and usage of the notion Gonzo-Blogger is necessary. I thin it’ll reveal additional information on the monster theory.
41. “Bloggers are navel-gazers … there’s an over fascination with self-expression, with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting.” (Wired News Dec. 2002) cited According to (Davies, William May 2003).
42. See (Granovetter, Mark, 1973) for the value of weak ties..
43. See (Gillmor, Dan, May/June 2003).
44. See (Shirky, Clay 2003).
45. See (Wellman, Barry; Quan-Haase, Anabel; Boase, Jeffrey; Chen, Wenhong, Oct 2002).
46. See (Nielsen, Jakob, Feb 2000).
47. See (Ito, Joichi, March 2003).
48. See (Jenkins, Elwyn, Jul 2002).
49. See (Stegbauer, Christian 2001)
50. See (Resnick, Paul 2001)
51. See (Resnick, Paul 2001)
52. See (Shirky, Clay, Sept 2003).

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