In Defense of the Genre

Throughout the two readings, there seem to be a period of contention regarding whether or not blogs should be classified more as a genre or a medium. As of right now, I’m straddling the fence between the two, but I hope by reasoning the content of the readings aloud, it might get me closer to committing to one explanation or another.

Jill Walker Rettberg’s “Blogging” echoes my very indecisiveness. In one instance, blogs “share similarities in layout and contain many of the same elements” (Rettberg, 19). These shared conventions, such as the use of dated entries, titles, and ‘about me’ pages, are commonly found when it comes to genres. For example, Rettberg references the example of a sonnet (18). People who are familiar with the genre know that sonnets are a form of poetry that contains fourteen lines, and even that genre contains subgenres. There are Italian sonnets and English sonnets, with the latter employing a specific rhyme scheme. However, Rettberg also visits the other side of the argument and explains that labeling blogs as a medium could be just as correct. In my own words, a medium is the channel in which a message is communicated. Television is a medium. Books are a medium. Sculpture is a medium.

Rettberg uses the following example:

“Just as an artist chooses to use oil pants rather than watercolour or a director chooses to work with cinema rather than television or theatre, a blogger has chosen to work within the set of constraints and affordances offered by blogging software” (20).

There’s also a deliberateness when choosing a medium because the rhetor should examine which medium would be best used to showcase their desired genre. If a photographer wanted to showcase their work, would a blogging platform be better than designing their own website? Either way, Rhettberg subscribes to the reasoning that it could be both depending on how you view blogs.

In Carolyn R. Miller and Dawn Shepherd’s “Blogging as a Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog,” there is no waffling between whether or not weblogs are a medium or a genre. Like Rhettberg, they call upon the same conventions that comprise the blog as identified as a genre. “These early blogs had three primary features: they were chronologically organized, contained links to sites of interest on the web, and provided commentary on the links” (5). Now, blogs have evolved to incorporate a handful of other convention. Things like widgets can synch a calendar with your blog and the ways in which you can link to other sites has increased. It’s a genre that keeps adapting and, in my opinion, improving, which is something that I find to be really interesting. When compared with older genres, like sonnets, blogs possess a flexibility that is rarely seen elsewhere.

While only one of the readings makes a side-by-side comparison, I think that it really depends on how a blog is being used or in what context it’s being explained in order to really place a definitive label. When looking at options for a project with a digital supplement, I may look at different mediums – Blogger, Prezi, Wix – to convey my ideas or information. Depending on that information, a website might be better than a blog. In this case, blogs are acting as a medium rather than a genre. But, if I decided on using Blogger, I would then have to tackle what sort of blog I wanted to make. Would it be educational? Satirical? These questions cause my blog to function more as a genre.

I know it sounds like a cop out to say that it’s both, but I honestly believe that the answer depends on the context and usage of the term ‘blog.’

I also wanted to examine the Berkenkotter and Huckin quote found in the Miller and Sheperd reading.

“Genres are the intellectual scaffolds on which community-based knowledge is constructed” (1).

One thing that blogs really excel at is creating the opportunity for discourse. “If you’re interested in any particular topic, you can probably find a blog – or a dozen blogs – about it. If not, you can easily start your own blog” (Rettberg, 18). It’s also a genre that can become inadvertently for public consumption. In Rettberg’s example of Dooce, the blogger, Heather B. Armstrong, started her blog to vent and rant about her annoyances with work. I doubt she planned for it to grow into one of the most popular personal blogs on the Internet, according to Technorati.com (Rettberg, 9). A lot of personal blogs are created to just let off some steam in a kind of digital catharsis. Other blogs, such as those with a political theme, use current events to inspire their writing. Sticking with the example of the political blog, there can be differences in the way information is blogged or presented. One blogger may choose to just cover the facts in a journalistic approach, while another may decide to spotlight a political event to spark a discourse of activism.

The latter subgenre makes use of Miller and Shepherd’s concept of kairos. “Kairos describes both the sense in which discourse is understood as fitting and timely – the way it observes propriety or decorum – and the way in which it can seize on the unique opportunity of a fleeting moment to create new rhetorical possibility” (Miller & Shepherd, 2). Bloggers, especially within the political sphere, need to keep relevant. I think it’s more difficult to get an audience to care about and “create a new rhetorical possibility” in regards to a political problem that happened a decade ago, as opposed to one that is current and accessible in a variety of news sources.

Truthfully, I think these two readings have given me more to unpack rather than provide answers to questions like genre v. medium. However, it has become clear that blogs aren’t as simple as they seem. There are rhetorical choices for nearly every aspect I can think of for choosing and using a blog. What platform should I use? Am I going to be blogging for an audience or is this just for myself? How should I arrange my content? After reading these analyses, I can easily say that blogs are one of the most involved genres I’ve ever used. However, they’re extremely forgiving and flexible, which I think is why it’s so widely utilized, from disgruntled professionals blogging about their coworkers to techies that want to stay on top of the latest industry advancements.