How Conversational Are Weblogs?
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Abstract
Popular and scholarly accounts describe weblogs as conversations. But how conversational are weblogs? The communication theory and model proposed by Jakobson offers one way to unpack this question. Weblogs are embodied in ambiguous relations of addresser and addressee. These ambiguous relations make it possible for weblog readers and writers to adopt a conversational mode of address even when they are not in conversation with each other. However, weblogs and conversations clearly differ in their forms of contact and in how participants use that contact to constitute a context for meaningful and effective reference. Furthermore, while weblogs deploy some of the performative conventions of conversation and non-standardized writing, the use of such conventions does not make them conversations. To conceptualize weblogs as conversations mistakes and obscures the distinctive message and code relations of both weblogs and conversations.
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