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The journal blog: a traditional form mediated by the Internet

Blogs are a little more personal, and the etiquette is less defined: if a [bulletin] board is like a party, is a blog like your living room? A booth at a street fair? I think it’s like a front porch: it feels like a part of your house; you put furniture on it, plants. But it’s right there on the street and the only thing stopping someone from walking away with your hanging ferns is social convention. The sense of it being private and owned, well, that’s illusory. (The Leery Polyp, 1 February 2005)

When is a diary not a diary? Perhaps when it’s a blog. As we have seen, early bloggers tried to act as filters of the Internet, directing their readers to interesting information through ...

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