"Blogging and Mass Politics"

Being new to blogging has been a learning experience. Just like getting a Facebook or Twitter, you have to learn how the site is used. After reading many articles on blogging, I have learned more and more about how it works. In the article "Blogging and Mass Politics," I learned how blogs have been a way for people to state their opinion on certain topics and issues that they might not feel comfortable with saying in person to someone. There are so many different types of blogs and blogs for all different kinds of things. Even though there are many blogs, we sometimes still stick to what we know and what we like. After reading this article, I realized even though there are blogs for just about anything, there are times where we cannot believe if things that are said are actually true. The article compares blogging to a coffee shop because people find a common ground where they can talk to each other about certain topics. The big difference is that they are not talking in person when they are blogging. One idea that the author talked about that was very interesting was that there are different types of bloggers. People can be put into different groups based on three categories. Within each of these three categories, there are two subcategories to help make more groups. When I read this, I was very shocked because I always thought that people were just people who posted blogs or commented on blogs. I never knew that the way they responded determined what kind of blogger they are. When I continued reading and began reading the descriptions of each type of blogger, I connected one specific one with the people who commented on the blog I am using for my paper. Being a baking blog, the people who are commenting are usually saying good things about the recipes. Sometimes the people even add their own recipes that are somewhat different than the one given. One thing I found kind of different was the name "egghead." This is one of the groups and after reading the different names, this one stood out most to me. I thought about it and I don't think I would ever like to be called an egghead. Another interesting fact that struck me was about how people in different places go to dangerous levels, like risking their life, to blog about certain issues they face. One of these issues is the abuse of human rights. These people want to get their views out there and make others aware of the types of things they have to go through. This really shocked me and even made me think about my rights and how lucky I am to have the freedoms I do. All together, I found this article to be very interesting and a lot of this information I never knew. I always thought blogging was so easy and so simple, but there is much more behind blogging than just posting and commenting. Everything you do can reflect what kind of person you are.