Danah Boyd, the author of “A Blogger’s Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium” defines blog from a variety of perspectives. A blog can be defined in numerous ways which makes it difficult to understand the actual meaning since it has been conceptualized by the media, researchers, tool developers, and practitioners. She interviewed a total of sixteen bloggers from a diverse set of backgrounds to learn what their definition of blogging was. Blogging is not just an online journal to them but somethng more personal. Boyd explains that a blog is not another a form of communication but rather a medium through which communication occurs. She explains in her article, “In the context of communication, a medium is the channel through which people can communicate or extend their expressions to others. Examples of mediums include paper, radio, and television. In McLuhan’s terms (1964) a medium is an “extension of man” that allows people to express themselves. Blogs are precisely this; they allow people to extend themselves into a networked digital environment that is often though to be disembodying. The blog becomes both the digital body as well as the medium through which bloggers express themselves.”
- Danah Boyd speaking at ETech
http://reconstruction.eserver.org/064/boyd.shtml