Classification of blogs

So we figured out the whole big issue with blogging. The Blogosphere is big, it reaches out to a lot of people and is made up of a lot of people. The amount there is, rest assured, do not express their thoughts over the same issue. In fact, blogs can consist of anything you desire, falling under several common categories.

In an ABC media program guested by author and media analyst Margaret Simons in September 2008, she listed down several different genres as such:

• Pamphleteering

This is similar to what we would casually know as 'political blogs'.

• Digest

A type of blog that summarises and collects material from elsewhere, usually known to be mainstream, and posts up links to it. A good example of this would be Metafilter, proclaimed the best media blog in 2003 by Forbes.com (Hesseldahl 2003).

• Advocacy

This genre is quite similar to 'Pamphleteering' but is usually published by an interest group or an advocay group.

• Popular Mechanics

An weblog version of how-to-do information varying in categories from photography to gardening to sewing. Basically, any sort of speciality.

• Exhibition

Like the title given, it is a blog that exhibits works done by the blogger. In simple terms, it can be a photoblog or even a blog with your own writing works, be it poetry or fiction writing.

• Gatewatcher

Interestingly, this is quite like a media-critique blog by small groups with such interest in observing the actions made by the media. One such example would be Australian blog, Possum Comitatus.

• Diary

The name says it all, it is basically an online journal that depicts about anything personal of the blogger's. Personal journals, as agreed by Simons, seem to be the most popular genre taking about 70 to 80 per cent of blogs (Rosen 2004). According to Technorati's 2008 report, this genre is less popular in Europe. However, though this is depicting one's personal life, some do become rather popular as in the case of local teenager Lim May Zhee.

• Advertisement

A commercial blog advertising its products or services.

• News

Blogs that break and report news, the new level of journalism.

Besides this, there are also various other mediums of blogging such as video blogging (vlog), audio (podcast), photo blogging as mentioned earlier (photoblog), and several others (Wikipedia 2008).

As it is, even from those categories, many other sub-categories can be formed based on topic. For some, it is quite hard to specifically classify a blog type. For example, how do you classify a video blog that uploads news programmes with a summary of it? Is it a vlog or a news blog?

This is how globalized and advance our technology has become. It is hard to generally categorize a blog with just one category. Perhaps that is how with various interests, blogging communities are formed to discuss and to share.

References:

Simons, M, Funnell, A & Davies, A 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, radio recording, ABC Radio National, viewed 6 November 2008, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

Hesseldahl, A 2003, Best Media Blog, Forbes.com, viewed 6 November 2008, http://www.forbes.com/2003/03/17/cx_ah_mediablogslide.html?thisSpeed=20000

Rosen, J 2004, Your Blog or Mine?, The New York Times, viewed 6 November 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/magazine/19PHENOM.html

Technorati.com, State of the Blogosphere 2008 - Day 2, viewed 5 November 2008, http://www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/the-what-and-why-of-blogging/

Wikipedia 2008, Blog, viewed 6 November 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogging