ABSTRACT
The democratization of the tools of publishing by the Web has been nothing less than revolutionary in terms of its effects on and implications for society, culture and mass media. “Citizen journalism,” personal publishing, including blogging, and desktop publishing are re-shaping media and re-defining roles and job descriptions throughout journalism and communication. This chapter focuses especially on blogs, the most popular format or dimension of personal publishing, a format that has brought the cost of writing for the Web to the vanishing point. As part of the broader trend toward participatory, networked grass roots journalism, blogs are influencing how products are introduced, how political campaigns are run and even how wars are fought.
