Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works

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Oh, mighty sword.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

We all know about the pen and the sword, but the place of the keyboard in that battle is, in some cases, made superior. Stuff happens when it gets online.

Religious bloggers have their own track record. The Sic'em Bloggers got after a college for the speaker they had invited, causing the college to withdraw the invitation and the dean to discuss.

There are many other stories which can be tossed into the pile on bloggers that broke news and brought down a public official, such as RatherGate. The latest example of a blogger breaking a news story could be Obama's recorded gaffe on small towns (made while at a fund raiser in San Francisco) in which he disparages the people he supposedly supports, ironically made just a few weeks after his trip to Grand Forks in which a sizable portion of the crowd of 16,000 people who came to see him drove hours from...small towns. It was a blogger that got that little scoop.

Then there are the bloggers who get arrested for the things they say.

What is a blogger, really, but a citizen journalist? And what does that mean, really, but that in every moment there is a the possibility of a kind of disguised reporter waiting to reveal what's happening to the world? And what is that, but a kind of threat to public officials to keep in line, and a kind of threat to private people who have no idea that the silliest, most human things they do might annoy someone and end up (hilariously) on a blog? Or that a cell phone photo of you going about your usual, private day in a public space may end up for the world to see?

Some citizen journalists take it seriously, and it becomes what it could. Some abuse it and decide to slam their ex-boyfriend.

Citizen journalism via blogging is kind of a populist's Big Brother. There's not just one entity watching you. Everyone ends up watching you.

Just ask my family and friends, who end up on this blog.

We are all voyeurs, aren't we?

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