Assuming that you have set up a blog and know how to create html links and basic formatting and publish a post, the next objective is to go beyond the mechanics of blogging to work with blogging rhetoric -- and to connect that rhetoric with your role as a citizen in a democracy.
First, you will make a post that serves a community of interest by directing attention to a worthwhile resource on the Web via an annotated link, including short, salient quotes, and explaining why your selected resource is worthy of attention by this community -- the co-filtering function of blogging.
Then you will construct a post that links to two or more websites and explain the overarching idea that connects the sites you select -- connective writing.
Then you engage in online critical public discourse by analyzing the content of a site you link in a blog post, asking probing questions about the assumptions, assertions, and logic of the arguments in the site you link.
Moving on to the exercise of a public voice, you will construct a post that takes a position on an issue, using links to other relevant websites to support your position.
Finally, you will develop a series of public voice posts, with appropriate arguments and links, on a single issue, over a period of time.
Many bloggers serve as "intelligent filters" for their publics by selecting, contextualizing, and presenting links of particular interest for that public. In this context, a "public" differs from an "audience" because you, in your role as a blogger, have in mind when you write a community of peers who not only read but actively respond to what you write, who might act upon your advice, and who might join you in discussion and collective action. The public you choose to address could be a public in the sense of a political public sphere that undergirds democracy -- the communications you engage in with your fellow citizens, with whom you share responsibility for self-governance. The public doesn't have to be political, however. It could be an engaged community of interest -- others who share your profession, avocation, or obsession. When fans begin writing fan fiction or remixing and sharing cultural content, they are acting as a public -- a culture-producing public. AIDS patients organized collective action that influenced research funding and the pharmaceutical industry -- creating an effective public through their discussions about their mutual interest. What interests you -- strongly, even passionately draws your attention? Is there a community that shares your interest? Could you and the others constitute a public? Clearly defining and understanding your public is the necessary first step to developing a public voice -- the voice you use when that public, and your potential to act together, is clearly in mind when you blog.
Your first exercise:
1. Define to your satisfaction and in your own terms a particular public.
2. Keeping that public in mind, post a link in a blog post to any site on the web -- a blog post, a mainstream news item, a Wikipedia entry, an online community or marketplace, audio or videocontent -- that has the potential to enhance that public's knowledge, incite that public to take action, provoke that public to respond to you.
Will Richardson began using the term connected writing to refer to a specific kind of critical, disciplined blogging that he described in this way:
What I have been trying to celebrate, however, is what I see as an opportunity for a new type of writing that blogs allow, one that forces those who do it to read carefully and critically, one that demands clarity and cogency in its construction, one that is done for wide audience, and one that links to the sources of the ideas expressed....I’m talking about something uniquely suited to blogs. I’m talking about this post, about our ability to connect ideas in ways that we could not do with paper, to distribute them in ways we could not do with the restrictiveness of html, and to engage in conversations and community in ways we could not do with newsgroups or other online communities before.
Your second exercise:
1. Present to your public at least two links in the context of a post that explains their value to your public.
2. Elaborate a larger point, using the connection between the links you select to suggest a wider pattern. Explain the connection and suggest a meaning. You don't have to prove your point in this exercise -- just use two links and the connection between them as the context for your own point, which should stand on its own. You can start with your opinion and use the links as support or illustration; or you can start with the links and approach your point inductively, by example.
Certainty about authority and credibility is one of the prices we pay for the freedom of democratized publishing. We can no longer trust the author to guarantee the veracity of work; today's media navigator must develop critical skills in order to sail through the oceans of information, misinformation, and disinformation now available. The ability to analyze, investigate, and argue about what we read, see, and hear is an essential survival skill. Bloggers can and do spread the most outrageously inaccurate and fallaciously argued information; it is up to the readers, and most significantly, other bloggers, to actively question the questionable.
Your third exercise:
1. Link to a website -- a blog post, online story from a mainstream media organization, any kind of website -- and criticize it. If you can provide evidence that the facts presented in the criticized website are wrong, then do so, but your criticism doesn't have to be about factual inaccuracy. Debate the logic or possible bias of the author. Make a counter-argument. Point out what the author leaves out. Voice your own opinion in response.
When you speak in a public voice -- as a citizen appealing to other citizens as part of the serious business of self-governance -- you are undertaking the co-creation of democracy. Your liberty probably depends on how well and how many citizens learn to use many-to-many media to exercise their public voice.
Your fourth exercise:
1. Pick a position about a public issue, any public issue, that you are passionate about. Immigration. Digital rights management. Steroid use by athletes. Any issue you care about.
2. Make a case for something -- a position, an action, a policy -- related to this public issue. You don't have to prove your case, but you have to make it. It doesn't have to be an original position, but you need to go beyond quoting the positions of others. Provide an answer to your public's question: "What does the author of this blog post want me to know, believe, think, or do?"
3. Use links to back up or add persuasiveness to your case. Use links to build your argument. Use factual sources, statements by others that corroborate your assertions, instances that illustrate the point you want to make.
If the only public statements people make online about issues are unique instances, drive-by comments, singular potshots, then perhaps it adds up not to a healthy public sphere but to a population of self-centered individuals indiscriminately broadcasting their opinions. It isn't difficult to find examples of "so what?" opinion-making online. Other than venting, there seems to be no real purpose to many posts and entire blogs. Venting isn't enough. Take your argument or observation about a public issue a step further and develop a short campaign around it:
Your fifth exercise:
1. Start with the case you made in the previous exercise, or pick another position or another issue -- as long as it is something you personally feel strongly about.
2. Make a series of a post each day for at least three days, in which each post builds upon or refers to subsequent posts in a campaign that relates the separate posts to a single position or action.
Page Last Updated: May 17 1:40pm by Howard Rheingold