Muttons In The Morning

(Picture: DJs Justin Ang & Vernon)
On the way to school today, I was tuning in to 98.7FM, a program called Muttons in the Morning. They were getting listeners to SMS their thoughts on blogging and why they do/don’t practice blogging.

There was 1 interesting response that I remember hearing. This guy was called up and he said something like, "I think blogging is a childish act. These people think that they can post photos and info about themselves hoping to get a shot to fame." What a misconception. Another girl’s response was due to her concerns on privacy. Most people who dislike it are skeptical about it.

Indeed, if not for our COM125 module, I don't think even half the class would be blogging. As much as some people dislike/don't have the interest in blogging, claiming that it is a "childish act" is way extreme.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think at least 50% of the bloggers in the world do not engage in blogging hoping to get a shot at fame. Fame is like a positive (or negative, depending on how you look at it) externality that happens to only a fraction of the bloggers in the blogosphere.

So, why do people blog?
As far as we've learned in class, there are 5 motivations for blogging.
- to "document my life"
- as commentary
- as catharsis
- as muse
- as community forum

(Source: Nardi, B.A., Schiano, D.J., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). Why we blog. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 47(12), 41-46.) -- Found in Kevin Lim's COM125 presentation slides, "The Rise of Us."

---

There’s a program tonight (13th March, 2007) called The Arena where students engage in debates on certain topics. It is at 8:30pm on Channel 5. The topic tonight will be about whether bloggers have become more influential than journalists. What do you all think?