SRR for March 20th. Herring et. al and "Women and Children First"

Read the introduction to Into the Blogosphere and then settled on Susan Herring et. al's piece "Women and Children Last: the discoursive constructs of weblogs" out of what seemed like a very enticing group of essays, mainly because I feel like I tend to pigeon-hole myself on certain topics - women and children not being one of them, and because I am sensitive to what I view as the tendency for feminist writings to be overly militant and/or confrontational - I wanted to at least give this one a chance. I was impressed with the comprehensive discussion within the introduction, including the much needed (for me at least) definition of a webblog for the sake of this product - a website that updates frequently with time stamped and reverse chronological ordering - although I still don't know what the MOOS and MUD's referred to are.
Herring's piece catalogues the demographics of blogs, showing that although blogs have long been considered (like the internet itself) empowering and democratic in nature, contemporary discourse about webblogs, whether scholarly or in mainstream media, tend to focus on adult and adult male blogs. Herring "conducted a gender- and age-focused content analysis of a random sample of 357 blogs collected from the largest available blog tracking site, blo.gs. The site tracks blogs hourly from four sources: antville.org, blogger.com,[1] pitas.com, and weblogs.com (the last of which itself draws from multiple sources)." This collection found that the blogs were divided roughly 50/50 between males and females, with adults (25+) and younger (both teens and "emerging adults) again breaking down at 50/50. The key differentiators come in with the breakdown of agegroups - significantly more male adults blog than female, while the opposite is true in younger individuals. Herring also notes that the blog styles show gender and age disparity, with adult males performing more of the "filter" style blogs of linking to newsworthy/mainstream media stories, while most younger bloggers, and most females, have personal "journal" style blogs. Herring's contention then, is that in focusing on the adult male blogs in scholarly research and media portrayals, we are perpetuating a dominant stereotype of male-centered opinions and importance within society, a society that continues to "embrace hierarchical values."
As someone who generally disagree's with the idea and practice of blogging (maddeningly, my wife is now suggesting I start my own), it was refreshing and intellectually stimulating to see the breadth of topics covered, a clear indicator of the wide-reaching social impact blogs will continue to have. In that vein, I enjoyed reading this material as published in "webblog" format vice the book, although interestingly, I still find that many of the patterns of "book" still impact how I read. For instance, I do not touch hyperlinks until I've read the entirety of the central (my view) narrative in linear progression, and after hyperlinking from the introduction, realized what part of my distaste for blogs is built upon (though relatively minor). The blogs I hyperlinked to, representative of many blogs, all tended to be excessively colorful, with clustered arrangements and distracting fonts, pictures or flash images, all of which take away from, rather than enhance my reading of the text (no, I am not arguing that a text is only hindered by images). Also, as I will get to in my reflection, Herring did not include sites such as LiveJournal into the discussion, considering them only precursors to the very "personal" blogs with which see then uses from Blogger.com and other sites. This is not an oversight of websites as much as it is a flaw in argument.
Although an interesting point, I have a hard time buying Herring's idea that because webblog discourse favors adult male blogs, that blogs are not inherently democratic. Why are we criticizing mass media for favoring the "filtered" blog style when reporting on certain stories. There are some realms, such as the political, where these filter styles are more appropriate. As sophomoric as it may sound, is it the adult male fault that most young and women want to have an online diary, and that socially, that online diary is not considered "newsworthy?" I will attempt to reenter the adult conversation in suggesting that it would be far more appropriate to address what outlets were covering what type of blog entry (filter/personal/combination) and even the why's of men writing filter's and women writing diaries, as means of promoting the democratizational abilities of webblogs. And further, in casually discarding online journals like Livejournal, as something less than the "personal blog," Herring and her co-authors are essentially perpetuating the serial hierarchy they seek to undue. Thus, in many ways, I liken the modern feminist argument presented here to those blood donation PSA's on today's radio, suggesting that by closing down a factory polluting drinking water, the individual is partly responsible for costing the jobs of hundreds in the town who know have no medical insurance to pay for health care - ranting, I know, but I think an important marker in the fight for democracy - explore the whole argument, and then approach rationally, as opposed to swinging for the fences on your first try.