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Broken Metaphors: Blogging as Liminal Practice

danah boyd
University of California, Berkeley
Media Ecology Conference 2005



 In January of 2005, PEW reported that 27% of American adult Internet users have read the

blogs or diaries of other Internet users (Rainie 2005, p. 1). While blogging is piquing the interest

of mainstream media, youth, academic researchers, and entrepreneurial Silicon Valley, only a

fraction of Internet users read blogs and many do not even know what the term means. As the

press attempts to cover the phenomenon, it is clear that `blog' is not a self-descriptive term and,

as a consequence, blogs, bloggers and blogging are being constructed in conflicting and

problematic ways.

 The goal of this paper is to reveal tensions underlying conceptualizations of blogging. First, I

introduce how metaphorical constructions of blogging are being employed and limiting research

on blogging by obfuscating an understanding of bloggers' practices. I use Ong's `secondary

orality' to discuss how blogging complicates delineations between orality and textuality. Finally,

I discuss other dichotomous moves in framing blogging such as spatiality and corporeality,

artifact and practice, relying on bloggers' depictions of their practices to shed light on the

tensions in each.

 This paper stems from my ethnographic research on blogging, including seven years as a

participant and insider, eighteen months as a participant-observer and eight months of explicit

data collection. During those eight months, I engaged in hundreds of informal discussions with a

diverse range of bloggers including early adopters and newcomers, people who blogged as part


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of their profession and those who blogged in their free time, college students and working

mothers. Most of my discussions took place in major metropolitan areas or through email and

instant messaging. I used tools like Technorati, Blogger's Next Blog and the recently updated

tools on Xanga and LiveJournal to get as much of a random sample of blogs as possible and read

thousands of random blogs to get a sense of content and practice. Using a combination of

snowballing, public advertisements on Craigslist and cold emails to random bloggers, I chose

sixteen bloggers who represented many of the different practices I observed and heard about

during my informal discussions and blog surfing.

    Of the sixteen subjects chosen, eight identified as male, six as female and two as

transgendered. Their ages ranged from 19-57 with a mean of 29.4. All of my subjects lived in

major metropolitan areas, with nine located on the west coast of the United States, four on the

east coast and three around London. All but one blogged in English. Twelve identified as

Caucasian, three as Asian-American and one as Latino. My subjects used a variety of different

tools for blogging. My subject pool did not include teenagers, which is a significant limitation

given their heavy participation in blogging. Additionally, the lack of representation of rural

regions, non-English speakers and non-Western cultures limits the findings.

    To begin, consider how blogging tools define their service. Blogger, one of the earliest tools,

conceptualized to blogging as "push-button publishing." Xanga defines itself as "a community of

online diaries and journals"1 while Typepad describes itself as "a powerful, hosted weblogging

service that gives users the richest set of features to immediately share and publish information --

like travel logs, journals and digital scrapbooks -- on the Web"2. Conceptual connections to



1
    http://help.xanga.com/about/whatisxanga.htm - November 26, 2004
2
    http://www.typepad.com/site/about/ - November 26, 2004


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diaries and journals are embedded in the names of at least two services: Diaryland and

LiveJournal. The latter has offered evolving definitions of "live journal" on its website in order

to ground newcomers:

     ... an up-to-the-minute log of whatever you're doing, when you're doing it.3

     ... an online journal that you can update with short entries many times a day, or with long

     entries a few times a week... 4

     ... a simple-to-use (but extremely powerful and customizable) personal publishing

     ("blogging") tool, built on open source software.5

    In articulating their offering, these services draw on metaphors like publishing and diarying or

journaling, differently emphasizing the community, content and practice involved. Mainstream

media employs similar metaphors, consistently emphasizing web diarying or amateur journalism.

Bloggers also use metaphors to describe their practice ­ the aforementioned in addition to note

passing, social bookmarking and fieldnote documentation.

    Metaphors allow people to conceptualize a new concept through connections with a known

one. Metaphorical descriptions are most valuable to outsiders who are trying to understand the

phenomenon and to new bloggers who are trying to position their practice in light of other

known practices. As blogging becomes internally naturalized, bloggers find the metaphors

frustrating, misleading and problematic and often discuss how what they do is or is not like

journalism or diarying. Just as defining email in terms of postal mail fails to capture many

aspects of email, defining blogging in metaphorical terms also fails to capture its essence. Many


3
  http://www.livejournal.com/ - November 27, 1999 (via Archive.org)
4
  http://www.livejournal.com/ - May 10, 2000 (via Archive.org)
5
  http://www.livejournal.com/ - November 26, 2004


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of my subjects found defining blogging pointless, preferring to speak broadly or focus on what it

is that they personally do. "Carl", a five-year veteran, explains in an exasperated voice:

   I've given up on definitional questions and gone for these tautologies. Like blogging is what

   we do when we say, "We're blogging." And not worried much about what's a blog, and

   what's a journal, and what's a whatever, link log, and a photo blog, and whatever. I think

   that they're not particularly meaningful categories. ... It's a blog because a blogger's doing

   it. It's a blog because it's caught up in the practice of blogging. It's a blog because it's

   made on blog tools. It's a blog because it's made up out of blog parts. It's a blog because

   bloggers are engaged with it, and everyone points at it and says it's a blog.

  After indoctrination, bloggers frequently move beyond metaphorical definitions, but those

analyzing blogs and blogging rely on these eschewed metaphors and categories in their

evaluation, often to the dismay of many bloggers. This form of evaluation is problematic

because it obscures the fundamental qualities of blogging, opting to focus on the similarities and

differences. In the worst scenarios, blogging is easily dismissed as an inferior or peculiar

replication of prior forms rather than as a novel practice that fits with bloggers' lives.

  Consider this New York Times headline: "Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of

Convention Press Corps" (Lee, 2004). Although the author consistently uses the self-ascribed

term blogging when discussing the practice of her interviewees, the editorial staff chose to label

the article using the common metaphor furthest removed from a conception of journalism. This

headline is innately political, revealing biases of the editors:

  1) Bloggers should not be given credentials because this implies that bloggers are journalists.




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 2) Bloggers are not journalists (like us) and it is problematic (to us) that they are perceived

     this way.

 To remedy their concern about how blogging is perceived, the New York Times chose not to

use "bloggers" in their headline. By employing "web diarists," they signify that bloggers are not

journalists because their content is solely about personal experiences. This headline also serves

to discredit the convention press corps for allowing non-journalists to participate. Some

bloggers, in turn, read the headline as indicative of the New York Times' fear that bloggers

challenge the legitimacy of traditional journalism's authority.

 While one might expect misrepresentation from the not-so-fair-and-balanced press, it is more

disheartening to see that metaphorical depictions of blogging cloud academic research. Consider

this title of a recent academic paper: "Blogging as Social Activity, or, Would You Let 900

Million People Read Your Diary?" (Nardi, et. al. 2004). Although these scholars gather

excellent ethnographic data and properly scope which aspect of blogging they are discussing in

the introduction, their title perpetuates the connection between blogging and diarying and

suggests an evaluation frame that is inherently flawed. Furthermore, for a study purporting to

emphasize bloggers' perspectives, this framing dismisses bloggers, fails to convey how bloggers

negotiate their audience, and misleads because 900 million people never read any blog. Blogs

may be publicly accessible, but they are not actually massively publicly consumed nor are they

written for such consumption.

 While these metaphors can be problematic, they do emerge from blogging and reflect different

aspects of the practice. The metaphors are not fundamentally wrong ­ they just do not convey

the full picture and relying on them means relying on a broken image. This is certainly true of

any metaphor, but in the case of blogging, it has limited how non-users conceive of blogging.


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The results have been detrimental ­ people have dismissed the practice based on the metaphors

not the practice itself. Lawsuits have emerged based on the metaphors and paranoia concerning

the perceived hyper-public nature of blogging has limited its proliferation.

 While there is no universal blogger, there are commonalities in their practices, conceptions and

intentions. It is a fragmented

 In order to understand what the metaphors are missing, consider why blogging is

conceptualized as journalism and diarying and what this says about the underlying practice of

blogging.

 Blogging can be framed as journalism because some bloggers seek to find and share memes,

record events and analyze non-personal data. Some bloggers engage in a practice that includes

mass dissemination of their entries and the audience they conceptualize is often much larger than

they have in reality. Many enjoy commenting and analyzing publicly available data about

events, policy, technology, social life, etc. Some lament mainstream media for not properly

covering topics about which they are passionate, or for not covering them appropriately. Some

believe that blogs fill gaps of knowledge presented by media and academia. For some, blogging

is explicitly an opportunity to resist mainstream culture's construction of information and

knowledge in an attempt to challenge the authority of traditional publication venues. While

journalists condemn bloggers for not abiding by a journalistic code of ethics, these bloggers

mock journalists for being anything but fair and balanced and view the purported code as

providing an excuse for journalists to not discuss the biases that are embedded in their writing.

Many of these bloggers unabashedly recognize that their blogs represent a personal perspective

and fault journalists for not being honest. These bloggers seek out others covering data of

interest and develop a network of bloggers that are interested in untraditional media.


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    Blogging can also be framed as diarying because many blogs contain unedited personal and

emotional reflections on daily life, ideas, observations and one's internal state. For a stranger,

access to this raw material may be akin to reading something private, like stealing a secret peak

at someone's diary. These bloggers are consciously documenting their lives, but they are doing

so for friends, not for the arbitrary stranger. Unlike diaries, which are written for the future self

and no one else, these blogs are very much written for a conceptualized audience, albeit a very

intimate and often known one. These bloggers are not seeking mass attention, although many

would love to find others who share their values, passions and perspective. It is this possibility

that motivates many bloggers who could password-protect their blogs to leave them open and to

join communities dedicated to particular interests6. Many bloggers who leave their blogs open

assume that uninterested strangers will just move on, but like minds will stop. In essence, these

blogs are digital bodies, complete with fashion markers intended to convey cultural and

subcultural signals that only have meaning to those with shared values. As Adam Reed found,

many of these bloggers see their blogs as them even though they also believe that not all of them

is represented in their blog (Reed, forthcoming).

    By shifting the focus away from the content and onto the practice, one can see that there are

commonalities in blogging, not just divisions. Bloggers are consistently producing content that

they are passionate about, directed at an audience that they feel can best support them. In the

process, they build up digital representations of identity and artifacts that serve as cognitive

histories. As a collective, they find value in the tensions between public and intimate, formal

and informal, orality and textuality. To think about some of these tensions, consider how

"Jennifer" defines blogging:


6
    25% of LiveJournal's entries are protected.


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    You're basically standing on a soapbox and reading something out loud only with a blog it

    feels like there's a big community square and everyone's got a soapbox and they're about the

    same height and everyone's reading at the same time. So it's a matter of people going and

    listening to one and oh, I don't like what you're saying and blogging with someone else and

    listening to what they're saying until you happen to find someone who is saying something

    interesting or you happen to know where your friend is on his soapbox saying something.

  In exposing how writing changed oral culture, Walter Ong categorizes oral speech and textual

writing based on their properties to discuss psychological and cultural effects. He focuses on

oral cultures untouched by writing, while simultaneously introducing a concept of `secondary

orality' whereby modern mediated culture creates a new orality that is simultaneously

remarkably like and unlike orality (Ong, 1982: 134). Although he only addresses the properties

of `secondary orality' very briefly, it is the suggestion of something beyond the dichotomy of

writing/speech that has made Ong the poster-boy for communications researchers trying to locate

computer-mediated communication. With the advent of each new digital communications

technology, researchers situate the new medium in Ong's `secondary orality' by marking which

features of orality are present.

  Unfortunately, as a category, `secondary orality' is effectively `other' whereby there are no

delineated properties, only an acknowledgment that these forms of communication are not truly

orality, but draw from it. Even within the scope of other computer-mediated communications,

there are differences in how textual/oral a given practice is. Blogging, for example, is far more

persistent and potentially isolating than instant messaging. Yet, unlike traditional texts, both

blogging and instant messaging can be conversational, the speaker is very present and the

audience is conceptualized and negotiated.


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  As Jennifer recognizes, blogging is situated somewhere between orality and textuality

depending on perspective. She feels as though she is speaking while her audience experiences

reading. Although the blogger speaks to a cognitively constructed audience, that audience may

not actually be present or listening and regardless, only makes their presence available via access

logs or explicit reactions such as comments or other communicated references to the blog

material. Unlike other forms of computer-mediated communication, the roles and experiences of

bloggers and readers/audience is quite distinct. Even as a lurker in a chatroom, one's presence is

visible through the list of participants and one's opportunity to participate is structurally

equivalent to anyone else ­ as text in a running discussion. In blogs, the reader is never

permitted to post, only to comment and there is a clear distinction between the posts and the

comments.

  Herein lies one of the essential communicative features of blogging ­ a clear distinction

between speaker and listener. With this, the speaker has a sense of ownership over their blog

and a strong desire to frame the norms. Consistently, bloggers speak of it being their blog; it is

them. The speaker controls the style, access, and whether or not listeners can comment. While

anyone can access most blogs, it is this sense of ownership that makes the blog feel like a

personal space. Bloggers have a sense that their blog reflects them and they have varying

degrees of openness to how others shape their blogs. Concerns are more present in people who

are negotiating larger audiences or audiences with different expectations.

  Struggles over control are extremely frustrating, yet endemic to the practice. Both Carl and

John have large, diverse audiences that have high expectations concerning their blogs. Carl often

resents his audience's expectations and is very leery of creating a "You are my audience. I owe

you something," relationship. "I feel like I really need to narrowly, and tightly define what I owe


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to my audience, and what my audience owes to me." For John, the social dynamics and

expectation of interactivity made him hesitate to begin. "[It's] kind of like inviting all of your

least socially functional friends into your living room and giving them plenty of beer. Blogs have

a way of attracting all kinds of uneven social behavior. And I wasn't sure I wanted to be at the

mercy of it." Bloggers with smaller audiences are not immune to awkward social situations

around blog control. Jessica, Andi and Simon have all experienced unwanted readers and

struggled with how to exclude readers who kept returning even after explicit requests to go away.

Such audience presence gives them a sense of being invaded.

 It is through this struggle for control that conceptions of blogs as public space break down.

The "space" of a blog is constructed not by the blogger but as an artifact of the blogger's

speaking and performing in the witness of a blogging tool. A blogger does not perform to the

blog, but in the act of blogging, the blog is produced. Yet, the readers go to the blogger's

constructed space and craft their reactions there. The blogger feels a sense of possession over

their blog while simultaneously using it to negotiate communication with others. Through this

possession, bloggers feel vulnerable when they struggle to maintain the norms that they desire.

It is through possession, vulnerability and the sense that the blog is an artifact of expression that

makes the blog feel like an intimate site, not a public space.

 Blogs as public/private space reveal another metaphorical meltdown where an imperfect

comparison allows us to see qualities of blogging without being able to properly categorize them.

Blogs as virtual bodies offers a complementary, although equally problematic metaphorical

structure for grounding the artifacts themselves, or more accurately, revealing the tension

between corporeality and spatiality.




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  Bloggers frequently speak about their blogs being their online identity, their digital

representation. They refer to how the blog gives them a locatable voice and identity in a

community. The blog is a blogger's digital `face' in a Goffman sense, showing the traces of past

expressions, revealing both what the blogger brings to the front stage and what aspects of the

backstage slip through. Of course, just as with any virtual corporeality, the act of having to type

oneself into being results in gaps that trouble any clean reading of digital bodies (Sunden, 2003,

p. 3). Yet, that very act of intended corporeality resists traditional concepts of the body as well

as traditional understandings of what constitutes a container of textual expression.

  As a practice, blogging is situated between a variety of different tensions ­ orality and

textuality, corporeality and spatiality, practice and artifact. In essence, blogging is a liminal

practice that challenges other practices in the process of defining itself. Metaphors allow us to

make sense of the properties of blogging, but they do not provide a grounded way of analyzing

the phenomenon. In order to properly analyze the phenomenon, we must move beyond

comparisons to known practices and ground our analyses in the tensions of blogging, in the

alterity of `secondary orality,' and the practices of bloggers. Rather than remaining trapped in

the confusing conceptions of blogging as X, we must transition to a conception of blogging as

something meaningful in itself. I present this paper so that we may begin to direct our efforts

away from metaphorical comparisons and into liminality in the process of making sense of

blogging as a practice.




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Bibliography

Lee, J.8. (2004, July 26). Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps.

 New York Times.

Nardi, B.; Schiano, D. & Gumbrecht, M. (2004). Blogging as Social Activity, or, Would You

 Let 900 Million People Read Your Diary? Proceedings of Computer-Supported Cooperative

 Work, Chicago, Illinois.

Ong, W. (1982). Orality and Literacy. Routledge.

Rainie, L. (2005, January). Memo: The state of blogging.

 http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_blogging_data.pdf

Reed, A. (forthcoming). 'My blog is me': texts and persons in UK online journal culture (and

 anthropology). Ethnos.

Sunden, J. (2003). Material Virtualities. New York: Peter Lang.




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