Blog

The blog [ blɔg ] (also: the blog) or even weblog [ wɛb.lɔg ], Engl. [ Wɛblɒg ], word intersection of Engl. World Wide Web and log for log, is a run on a Website and - most publicly - accessible diary or journal in which at least one person, web- logger, named blogger, keeps records, issues logs ( ' posting ') or writing down thoughts.

Often, a blog is "endless", that is a long, downward chronologically sorted list of entries that will wrap at specified intervals. The publisher or blogger is, unlike for example in case of mains newspapers, as a major author of the content, and often the contributions from the first-person perspective are written. The blog is a for author and reader easy to use medium for the representation of aspects of one's life and opinions on specific issues. Most but also comments and discussions the reader about an article are permitted. This allows the medium to both the filing of notes in a paper box, the exchange of information, ideas and experiences as well as the communication act. In this respect it is similar to an Internet forum, depending on the content but also an Internet newspaper.

The activity of writing in a blog is called blogging. The German National Library refers to blogs as Internet publications. However, no ISSN At weblog with decision of 2002 award. The terms " blog ", " blogger ", " blogger " and " blogging " have been found in everyday language input and are registered in the dictionary and Wahrig.

6.1 policy
6.2 trends
6.3 German Telemedia Act
6.4 Blog Aggregators

7.1 After content
7.2 After operators

History

The first blogs appeared on the mid-1990s. They were called online diaries and were websites where netizens periodically made entries about their own lives. The first German-language weblogs were netzine.de (1st Edition on January 3, 1996 at the network) by Walter Laufenberg, Robert Braun's Blog, Moving Target and the cyber diary founded by Christiane Schulzki Haddouti, which was aimed at children and young people, and later by the problem child action was taken. About the CL network, the Zagreb Diary of Dutch journalists Wam Kat was widespread.

As of 1996, services such as Xanga have been set up to easily enabled Internet users to set up your own weblog. 1997 one of the first blogs is started, which today exists, called Scripting News Dave Winer. Another early blog was Robot Wisdom by Jorn Barger, which was designated as the first with the term ' blog '. After a slow start such sites reported from the late 1990s, rapid growth. How Xanga grew from 100 blogs in 1997 to 20 million in 2005. Past few years, the " Blogging " is also used for business in so-called corporate blogs or corporate blogs. So many media now operate their own blogs to broaden their readership and receive feedback from their readers. The U.S. dictionary publisher Merriam- Webster chose the short form " blog" even word of the year 2004.

According to the Allensbacher computer and technology analysis in Germany operate 8.4 % of Internet users own blog. Worldwide, there is (as of October 2011) give a total of about 173 million blogs and at least 200 free blog provider.

Term origin

The term weblog appeared first time in 1997 on the site by Jorn Barger in 1999, the abbreviation " blog" was coined by Peter Merholz web designer - in the year in which generally began the rise of this kind of websites. After 2001, the traditional mass media attention to the new presentation. Initial research from the journalism of the phenomenon appeared, and more and more home users began to configure your own weblog. At the same time some blogs established as a respected media.

Technical features of weblogs

Basically, the amount of weblogs can be divided into two categories, namely in

Those that are similar to the software -as-a - service principle operated by a commercial provider and usually put any users after a simple registration available, and
Those that are operated by the respective owners on their individual server or webspace mostly under its own domain.

Well-known provider of blog communities are Google's Blogger.com, WordPress and Tumblr; besides also provide some social networks like Myspace to its members blog functionalities.

For the operation of an individual weblogs on the web space you will need a special weblog software and at least a rudimentary knowledge of HTML and the server technology being used. As can be customized Blogs adapt to your own needs very flexible, they are also often used as a pure content management systems, what they are purely technical point also. Under certain circumstances, such a configuration can cause the corresponding website is not perceived as a blog.

While many blogs in the blog communities aimed naturally very strong on the social and communication aspect, can be found at the individually hosted blogs also many that are attributable to the journalistic expression or range of customer communication and, accordingly, under the provisions of the German Telemedia Act ( among other the information requirements) fall.

Scientific communication characteristics of weblogs

Characteristic features of this form of communication are the individualization of communication, the reflexivity in terms of media communication, linking and networking of the web communication up to the blogosphere, filtering and selection of media communication by the blogger as a kind of new gatekeeper, the interactivity of all concerned, the abolition of boundary between recipient and producer and thus also between professionals and lay people (although not blogging by "communications professionals" such as journalists excludes ). Not yet been adequately studied are the effects of gender role images on the contents of the blog ( see also blogging and gender).

Technology

Software

It is characteristic of weblog publishing systems, that it is very easy with them, to publish web pages. There are content management systems that allow you to create new content and changes in and commenting even for untrained users, however, allow this little variations in web design. The creative adaptation is usually done only once during installation by selecting one of several available design templates ( Templates ). Many blog systems (eg WordPress) Improve the look by changing the targets (English: "templates" ) ( or even import your own ) subsequently change also.

Weblog software can be installed on the web space or used as an ASP service with free or paid providers. Among the most famous blog software systems include Serendipity, WordPress, Movable Type and Textpattern, which are mostly based on PHP. Rental offer ( Application Service Provider) in the German-speaking countries, for example, LiveJournal, Twoday.net, Blog.de or Blogger.de.

The published articles and comments are usually also readable by RSS news feed. For appear in modern browsers an icon (usually in the address bar ), or it is provided a hyperlink that is connected to the data stream to subscribe to.

Elements

Entries or posts

The entries, including postings, blog postings or posts called, are the products which are the main components of a weblog. They are usually listed in reverse chronological, the most recent posts can be found at the top so the weblog. Older posts are displayed partly on other sites or listed in archives.

Thread

As a thread here that the consecutive posts on a specific topic within a blog is called.

Permalinks

Each entry, in some weblog systems, each comment has a unique and unchanging, permanent Web address (URL ). Thus, other users or other blogs can directly link individual texts instead of the whole web logs and refer to those. These permanent links ( " permalinks ") can be used eg when calling a single article from an RSS feed out.

Comments

Many weblogs it is possible to publish your own opinion about an entry. Such a comment is then displayed on the same page as the entry itself or as a popup. In many Blogs, however you can specify whether the message will be displayed immediately or moderated, so must be tested by the owner and then unlocked. This is often used to prevent vandalism and spam in blogs.

Trackback and Pingback

If the blogger A links to a post by blogger B, this is indicated on the trackback function automatically in a linked site, similar to a comment. So does the linked blogger B or one of his readers that another blogger has made to this posting. Not every weblog software supports this feature.

Feed

A feed contains the contents of a weblog in a unified form. A feed can be subscribed via Feed Reader from an interested reader. With the feed reader, the reader can overlook several blogs at a glance and recognize that subscribed blog there are new posts. These posts can also be read in feed readers. There are several technical formats for feeds that are common RSS and Atom.

Asides

Asides (also clippings or snippets ) are smaller items that often consist of only a few words or lines and are used to reference with a brief explanation on topics of interest to other pages or weblogs.

Blog Actions

On Blogs various actions are performed to, amongst other things, the exchange of information. Also, the level of awareness of a blog depends on such actions. Known Blog actions are coordinated, about blog tours and blog parades.

Tag-cloud

Tag clouds ( tag cloud ) listen and weigh those used in Blog Tags to visually haunting way. They help for example when indexing.

Effects

Policy

Many human rights activists, especially in countries such as Iran and China, use blogs to publish reports on violations of human rights, censorship and current political and social situation, etc. without any censorship of governments. So blogged many journalists during the violent protests at the presidential elections in Iran in 2009 their reporting for foreign media. These blogs were an important source of news Western media.

Some widely-read bloggers have cult status in their home countries and can afford because of this prominent expressions of opinion, the unknown blogger would land you in jail. Also known in the West, for example, the Chinese blogger Han Han. 2009 already blogged 150 million Chinese.

Many politicians use blogs and similar formats as a PR agent, such as Twitter during the election campaign trips or events nowadays. Became well-known are some cases in which members of the German Bundestag during secret voting preliminary results to the public " tweeting ".

Trends

Some see the emergence of weblogs and their proliferation, particularly in the U.S., a new form of grassroots journalism, which can be made easily in Europe in the tradition of producing counter-public.

Follow the ever-growing proliferation of weblogs are:

The mainstream press does now in blogs applied topics and recognizes them partly as opinion makers. Examples include Germany in the company Jamba! and Yasni or the campaign you're Germany, who were subjected to severe criticism on blogs.
The popularity of the existing as independent blogs are trying to take advantage of business by animate bloggers to positive statements about products. Corruption is considered among bloggers as one of the worst accusations ever. Therefore, innovative companies and organizations rely on the so-called social media newsroom in which bloggers can relate to their own media-friendly information initiative.
Due to the nature and application of weblogs to draw conclusions about the personality of the blogger are optionally possible. Bloggers should be aware that Weblog entries are widespread and long-term archiving. Bloggers should very carefully therefore consider what and how they formulate and observe the self-data protection.
Blogs are struggling with the problem of spam blog.

German Telemedia Act

In Germany blogs fall within the scope of the Telemedia Act (in force since March 2007). Because according to the law text and weblogs are to be regarded as Telemedia, weblog operators are thus imposes certain labeling requirements. These include the need for an imprint if it is a business-like weblog.

Critics blurring of the legal text, which does not explicitly mention the criteria as to when exactly a blog is considered to be businesslike.

Blog aggregators

In addition to specific tools for searching and analyzing blogs, there are also so-called blog aggregators. These are similar to the news aggregators to either create a general discussion Summary of the blogosphere or to generate a user-specific summary and collection of selected blog posts.

Blog aggregators are for example:

Rivva
Virato

Blog typology

After content

Examples:

Blog Novels: published in the form of blogs on the Internet novel texts
Corporate Blogs: official company blog
Link Blogs: annotated link collections
Moblogs ( Mobile Blogs ): is a blog that is exclusively filled by a mobile telecommunications device, usually a mobile phone or PDA with content. This is also possible with almost any other mentioned form of blogs.
Travel blogs: travel reports
Tumblr: it will be published and a short text, links, images, videos and short quotes that has been noted by the author while surfing the Internet (see Tumblr )
Video Blog: also known as Vlog, for example, as a video podcast
Choice blogs: contributions to individual choices and the subject generally
Warblogs: (. Was of engl ) war, reports from war zones and crisis areas
Watch Blogs: critical involvement of individual companies, organizations or media

After operators

Individuals Individuals who communicate private interests, in their own right and without institutional mission
Persons acting in an institutional order, often with a very narrow thematic focus or a specific target ( customer loyalty, public relations, etc.)

Bodies: so -called corporate blogs, which are operated by companies
Blogs by not formally organized groups of people, often stakeholders; so-called author blogs
Blogs by associations, clubs and other non-profit corporations organized

Portmanteau Online newspaper Software as a Service Host (network) Blogger (service) Content-Management-System Pundit Gatekeeping (communication) Webbrowser Computer icon Uniform Resource Locator Human rights defender Du bist Deutschland Impressum Blog fiction Linklog Blook Karl Kraus (writer) Die Zeit

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