December 8, 2008
Blogging in 1K
Blogging
By Jill Walker Rettberg
Digital Media and Society Series
Polity
2008
184 pp.
Blogging suits two sorts of readers perfectly: traditional writers (and instructors) looking to understanding more about writing in digital media, and the tech-savvy (including today’s students) seeking to reflect on blogging and understand the practice more deeply, as something that is potentially social, narrative, literary, and political. While elegantly written, the book delves into the history of hypertext, the nature of social networks, and oral and print cultures in addition to covering Web history through the 2.0 days, corporate blogging, hoaxes, and the relationship of blogging to journalism. For students who are to learn about writing and the Web through blogging, this book is a must. Accessible to undergraduates, it goes beyond how-tos and chronicling to inquire about where blogging has been, is now, and will go. Finally, there’s coverage of so many aspects of blogging that only an uber-blogger would know it all already. Even new media scholars and bloggers will benefit from Blogging.