Long
before the internet, common people depended on the newspaper to get one hundred
percent of their news. People would read
their news quietly at the breakfast table, then television came along and news
stations popped up in every major city around the world. Millions tuned into these news programs once
televisions became popular and cheap enough to own in the middle and lower
classes. These news mediums are now
becoming less and less important as the internet is gaining more and more
importance as a medium of mass communication. One specific medium that the internet has to
dole out the world’s news is the blog.
Blog
is a term that stems from the longer term weblog, and these weblogs are
websites in which an individual or group of individuals post opinions, facts,
and information on a regular basis.
Anyone can have their very own blog on which they can write about anything
from puppies to political issues. But
what is so important about some of these blogs?
Are blogs really becoming extremely popular, popular enough to be a form of “mass”
communication and if so, why?
Well,
first of all blogs are doing something that has not been mastered by other news sources called
“Convergence”. Convergence is when
computing, telecommunications and media are all combined in a digital
environment. Blogs are effectively
combining text, audio, video, live feeds, social media, and many other things
to create a website that is extremely interactive and entertaining. A blog may have an article going about a
political convention and also contain a video or photos directly from
the convention itself pertaining to the article. Another reason blogs are becoming more and
more popular is because news on television or in the newspaper may not cover
puppies as much as you are interested in them.
On the other hand, you can search for a blog on the internet that
specifically talks about puppies and combines text, video, and images! This is why blogs are becoming more and more
important in the entertainment and news industry.
You
may not believe it but according to eBizMBA, Perez Hilton’s blog, which is all
about celebrity gossip and rumors (not necessarily my cup of tea), receives
over 10 million views per month! This is
in comparison to CNN’s ratings from last year where it only averaged 357
thousand viewers per month. The most
popular blog in the world is the Huffington Post, which covers politics, big
news stories, celebrities, and more. According to eBizMBA, the
Huffington Post boasts about 54 million viewers per month, an astronomical
following. These statistics are
critical, they demonstrate the fact that many blogs have already taken
over as a source of mass communication.
The question is not anymore whether or not blogs could be a form of mass
communication but it is how massive of a communicator will blogs become.
It
is plain and simple to see that blogs are becoming one of the largest mediums
of mass communication of news and information around the world. Blogs have variety and interaction so no
matter what you are looking for you could possibly find a blog about it. If you do not believe me then go onto Google
and search the first thing that pops into your head, if there is not a blog
about it, then make it yourself!
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