Posted February 20th, 2007 at 12:08PMNorton looks at the role of blogs in times of crises. After reading, I created a dichotomy of two broad forms that “crises blogs†(if you will) can take: the public or general interest, and the private or more narrowly focused. Norton tends to favor the former, and I would agree.
This distinction doesn’t have to do with what events are focused on, but how they’re covered. The “narrow-focus†blogs that Norton writes of are dominated by “missing persons†reports or similar content with limited value. She cites a variety of examples following the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and Hurricane Katrina. The value of blogs dedicated to missing people is limited, chiefly because of the random, unfocused nature of a typical small blog’s audience. The readers of a blog following either calamity would likely be a distance from ground zero, since they would have access to the internet and the luxury of spending their time online reading blogs. Or, imagine the success rate of a television program like “America’s Most Wanted†if the entire viewership was in, say, China. (An exception Norton notes is one Slidell, Texas blog, following Hurricane Katrina. But the actual effectiveness (were any of these personal messages posted ever read by the right party?) is still questionable and left unanswered.)
As Norton points out, all “crises blogs†are not wholly irrelevant. A first-hand retelling of an event can be gripping and humanizing, something that can affect the reader a thousand miles away. This is the more public, readily worthwhile “crises blog.†The worth of something like this is obvious because similar writing already (and has for some time) appears in print. First-hand accounts are everywhere, from respected monthlies to weekly tabloids.
To this end, blogs have the potential to become immensely important. The value of self-published first-hand accounts has already proven itself with bloggers from the Middle East – Iraq in particular. The accounts of both Iraqi and U.S. soldier bloggers have provided insights into the distant conflict that the public has arguably never had access to. Whether or not this is taken advantage of is a different question. And of course, with the rising significance of first-hand blogs, comes censorship or outright propaganda masquerading as reality. What quality control mechanisms do blogs and the broad blogging community have? For that matter, what quality control does print media really have? Print media has better copy-editors. Claims beyond that are questionable.
Norton ends the essay on an upbeat note that I think is unwarranted. Can blogs become a new, immediate form for communicating during times of crises? Not yet. When the levees are collapsing, our first instincts aren’t to start blogging about it.
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