Online Diaries: Transformation of Medium and Meaning - ...with a few added complications

Nevertheless, the public access to blogs has somewhat changed the meaning of diaries through creating legal issues and making some bloggers cater to their audiences. Returning to a point I raised in my top post, according to Hayles, material and meaning are deeply connected. She writes, “Books are more than encoded voices; they are physical artifacts whose material properties offer potent resources for creating meaning” (Hayles, 107). Because anyone with internet can access blogs (as long as the blogger’s privacy settings allow for anyone to see), the internet as a medium has added a few complications to diary-writing. As Carolyn Burke says, “Many online diarists, journal writers, and now bloggers encountered problems with friends, family, and employers (actual and potential). I always held myself out as immune. Perhaps I was wrong” (DHP). Unlike the eighteenth and nineteenth-century diaries that were used between family members and friends, or the twentieth-century diaries that were kept private or published posthumously, blogs are truly open to the public and, as such, cause many bloggers to run into legal issues, such as the lawsuits Burke’s employers filed against her. Using bloggers’ words as evidence, companies, friends, and even family members can sue bloggers. The internet allows blogs to be extremely widely available, so online diarists have to be much more aware of what they write.

Similarly, because of this public accessibility, many bloggers are much more aware of their potential audience and begin to cater their writing to that audience. In order to avoid lawsuits, online diarists may avoid certain topics, such as the workplace, or write more favorably about some topics than they normally would. In other words, the knowledge of potential readers may change the meaning of the blog in some writers’ minds. For example, blogger Jesse Chan-Norris, who started blogging in 1997, writes, “I know that there are people out there, and I care more these days about catering to them. There is a balance now. I now write knowing that what I say can have an effect on people” (DHP). For both good and bad, writing for a public and unknown audience may have an effect on the way certain bloggers write.

Nevertheless, there are some bloggers who at least claim to write as if they were writing for a private journal. For instance, Eric Allen says “I didn't read other journals, this was purely for my own benefit-I really didn't care if anyone else read it either” (DHP). Allen says he writes for himself and purely for his own benefit, so perhaps he avoids catering to his audience.

Current Mood: nervous