"THE BLOG"

Interested in this subject? Post your definition of what a BLOG is. and how to best use it.

• The first thing is to understand the medium: what is it? How is this medium best exploited? Apply McLuhan.
• The second is to focus on the objective. What purposes are best served by this medium? Personal? Political? Social? All and many others?
• How is a blog dissimilar from, say, the Spectator Papers? Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats"? or Eleanor Roosevelt's column "My Day"? The "New Journalism" of the Seventies? Is a blog a "mass" medium?
• Are the popular effects of the old journalism mirrored in the effects of the blogosphere today? aren't they just exponentially bigger? Or are they resally different?
• Other aspects: Interactivity; breaking news (tsunami info from the field)
• Negative potential; Disinformation (deliberatewly created by enemies) Spying; Apply Orwell. Misinformation. Gossip reported as fact. Unsubstantiated statements on equal plane with substantial research.

And so on...