Why discuss blogs?
Bringing blogs into a classroom discussion can address many topics--journalism, technology, business ethics. But why are blogs in the spotlight in the first place?
According to Wikipedia (2005), some political blogs were popular in 2001 and 2002, but the first major controversy involving blogs came at the end of 2002 when Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was accused of making a racist statement. Bloggers kept the scandal alive and cited similar statements by Lott, creating media coverage and leading to a public outcry against Lott that resulted in his resignation (Wikipedia, 2005).
After this appearance in the media, blogging gained more popularity in political arenas with political candidates using blogs as campaign tools as well as the general public using blogs as a form of Open Source Politics (Wikipedia, 2005).
While much public awareness revolves around the political side of blogging, this personal publishing tool reaches into all facets of society and culture. In the classroom, blogs can be used for general writing exercises, community building, sharing and critiquing projects, and logging research. Blogs can also be evaluated rather than created, and the large number of blogs available could provide a rigorous exercise in web search skills.
Activity:
- How do the blog entries in general compare to the mainstream media coverage?
- How do the blog entries compare to each other?
- How did you find information about the authors?
- What questions are you left with about the issues presented, and how do they differ by source?
- How would you compose a blog entry on the same issue?
Find a topic popular in the mainstream media and choose one article and two blog entries about this topic to review. Compare and contrast the content, the authors, the ideas presented, and the tone of each.