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ABSTRACT
This paper presents continuing
work on the internet’s impact on democratic practices, and the formation
of citizen-users’ literacies. The focus here is on blogs as a form
of e-governance.
The
online diary or blog has evolved as a popular genre: blogs
are a personalized media form frequently concerned with the felt effects
of both small daily events as well as large scale ones. An example of a
well-known citizen blog which has impacted on international readers
is “dear_raed.”
As a new
political tool, politicians’ blogs can help to familiarise citizens
with their representatives as individuals, inform them about constituency
work, recruit supporters for existing and would-be representatives, create
virtual publics, as well as market a party’s or politician’s ideology.
Blogging turns activities which appear to be a simple provision of
information, and a ‘finding out about government’ on the part of citizens,
into new forms of ‘governing’ citizens. Blogs are obviously more
than ways to ‘preach to the choir’ (Lenhart, 2003) … but what is the
nature of the e-governance work they are doing, exactly? Surveying the
content and uses of a sample of blogs, I compile a set of potential
capacities that each is helping to construct in citizen-audiences.
Keywords: Blogs,
democratic literacies, participation, governmentality, political marketing |
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