Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog

Abstract

�The FBI has been reading my diary,� claimed a high school student in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Elliston, 2003). In fact, Chapel Hill police in training with an FBI task force had read the student�s weblog. They were investigating a possible security breach in the school�s computer system, and the student�s blog had contained references to �hacking.� The student had told only a few friends about her blog and �didn�t intend for it to reach a wider audience. �It was really personal,�� she said. A blogger from Utah harshly criticized her Mormon upbringing and her job and co-workers online, assuming that her technophobic parents and her boss would never find out. But they did, and �All hell broke loose,� as she put it. She alienated her parents and lost her job. �It was shocking for everyone,� she said; �I was extremely na�ve.� (St. John, 2003). Another blogger reports on her friends and her boyfriend, saying, �There�s not a lot I won�t put on there� because �I love to be the center of attention.� This 18-year-old also said that her mother was aware of her blog but did not know how to find it, adding that she relied on security by obscurity (St. John, 2003). In China an intimate blog written by a 25-year-old who also wrote a magazine sex column attracted 10 million daily visitors to the Sina.com server. Her blog initiated a �raging debate� on the internet, and the Chinese censors banned her forthcoming book (Yardley, 2003). Although she defended her right to write about her sex life, the blogger said that she never realized her blog would be read so widely or that it would create such controversy. She quit her job at the magazine and has shut down her blog.