Metaphors for weblogs

The page for the 3rd Encontro of weblogs in Porto has gone up. The provocative question for the conference is: "And if weblogs finish in 2006?"

In the first blog entry Fernando Zamith takes the same line that Monica André and Atrium did a week ago - that the weblog is merely a different type of publishing tool, albeit with a blog culture growing round it. (Yuk - that C word again)

I think that the metaphor for the weblog as publishing tool is reductive. I worry that attending too closely to weblog as tool or as just one more means for publishing overlooks the network of social relations and the social context that helps people make sense of and give meaning to blogs - and to all technologies for that matter.

A more helpful amalgam of metaphors in my research would be:

* weblog as voice;
* weblog as emerging identity;
* weblog as an intersection of multiple identitites;
* weblog as design for self;
* weblog as social practice;
* weblog as resource for designing for communities and human activities;
* weblog as social resourcefulness;
* weblog as mutation.

All the more when you think of how weblog designs and practices are changing and being changed by things like tagging, RSS feeds and mashups.

(Just for the record, there is one Chica on the seven-chico organising commission and none on the academic commission.)



Tags: 3encontro, portugueseweblogs, identity