Blogging About Blogging LX

Microdoc News recently published a decent appraisal of the "dynamics of a blogosphere story." Tracking 45 stories over the last three months, the article takes a look at what one might call "collective journalism" or "distributed journalism," suggesting that individual blog posts and entries are not stories in and of themselves, but part of a larger, distributed story. Discussing how blogosphere stories get storied and develop, the piece gives somewhat short shrift to how such stories end. What is missing in this analysis -- and the larger blogging practice and process -- is a contextual sensemaking at the end of the cycle in which the atomic stories are drawn on to create and distribute a metastory outlining the overall discussion to date. As things stand, blogosphere stories don't necessarily end. They reach multiple ends, more often than not dissolving and drifting away as the trigger meme falls out of favor, out of the limelight, and off of the radar. That said, the writers' conclusion that "blog stories are understood and appreciated in aggregate and not in isolation" is worth paying attention to. How can we better connect and contextualize these collectively written stories?

Thanks to Daypop.