At last, my quest for the definitive answer to the question: "What is a weblog anyway?" is finally over. I have stumbled across (which so often happens in cyberspace) a site where I found a woman who actually wrote the encyclopedic answer.
Now I am sure this should fill me with peace and serenity. However all it does is point out that a certain person was asked a question, they answered it, to the best of their ability, and now it is going to be graven on the pages of academic solemnity in perpetuity, and that will be that. But after all, it is STILL one person's interpretation.
Am I turning into a relativist? Am I questioning the "authorities"? Is there NO absolute truth in the world?
I can feel the ground beneath me beginning to crumble! Who am I willing to trust to define what things are? Or are not? Can megalomania be far behind?
(Somebody get her a Valium...)
In any case, here is the definition, (not that there's anything wrong with it), according to:
Dr Jill Walker, Dept of Humanistic Informatics, University of Bergen
This is the definition of "weblog" I've written for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, which is forthcoming in 2005.
Weblog
A weblog, or *blog, is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first (see temporal ordering). Typically, weblogs are published by individuals and their style is personal and informal. Weblogs first appeared in the mid-1990s, becoming popular as simple and free publishing tools became available towards the turn of the century. Since anybody with a net connection can publish their own weblog, there is great variety in the quality, content, and ambition of weblogs, and a weblog may have anywhere from a handful to tens of thousands of daily readers.
Examples of the *genre exist on a continuum from *confessional, online *diaries to logs tracking specific topics or activities through links and commentary. Though weblogs are primarily textual, experimentation with sound, *images, and videos has resulted in related genres such as photoblogs, videoblogs, and audioblogs (see intermediality; media and narrative).
Most weblogs use links generously, allowing readers to follow conversations between weblogs by following links between entries on related topics. Readers may start at any point of a weblog, seeing the most recent entry first, or arriving at an older post via a search engine or a link from another site, often another weblog. Once at a weblog, readers can read on in various orders: chronologically, thematically, by following links between entries or by searching for keywords. Weblogs also generally include a blogroll, which is a list of links to other weblogs the author recommends. Many weblogs allow readers to enter their own comments to individual posts.
Weblogs are serial and cumulative, and readers tend to read small amounts at a time, returning hours, days, or weeks later to read entries written since their last visit. This serial or episodic structure is similar to that found in *epistolary novels or *diaries, but unlike these a weblog is open-ended, finishing only when the writer tires of writing (see narrative structure).
Many weblog entries are shaped as brief, independent narratives, and some are explicitly or implicitly fictional, though the standard genre expectation is non-fiction. Some weblogs create a larger frame for the micro-narratives of individual posts by using a consistent rule to constrain their structure or themes (see Oulipo), thus, Francis Strand connects his stories of life in Sweden by ending each with a Swedish word and its translation. Other weblogs connect frequent but dissimilar entries by making a larger narrative explicit: Flight Risk is about an heiress’s escape from her family, The Date Project documents a young man’s search for a girlfriend, and Julie Powell narrates her life as she works her way through Julia Child’s cookbook.
There now, don't you feel better about yourself already?
I wonder if *I* could get a degree in "Humanistic Informatics" ?
I think I will instead confer upon myself the degree of:
"Doctor of Humanistic Weblogology"
Cum Outrageous Audaciousness Lauditorium