Tracy L. M. Kennedy, "The Personal is Political:
Feminist Blogging and Virtual Consciousness-Raising" (Page 2 of 4)
Surveying the Blogosphere
Weblogs evolved from early Web sites that functioned as early online
journals or diaries, reporting and keeping running commentaries on
people's daily activities and interests. In the late 1990s, there were
only a small number of these sites, which would later be called
"weblogs" by Jorn Barger.[4]
The tragedy of September 11, 2001,
seems to have been a turning point in the blogging boom. Blogs proved
especially useful in relaying information and communicating with others
at a time when traditional media outlets were failing the general
public. People wanted to hear firsthand what was happening in New York
and to know whether their friends, coworkers, and family were safe. This
horrible moment in American history, was a revolutionary one for
blogging as means to communicate information.
The blogosphere has changed considerably since the beginning of the
decade. According to Technorati,[5]
the blogosphere continues to
double about every six months; a new blog is created every second of
every day.[6]
People all over the world have caught on to blogs
and are using the medium in several ways, from the political blogs that
have received so much media attention, to online diaries and venues to
discuss hobbies or specific interests. While there have been no recent,
thorough studies detailing the demographics of the blogosphere, data
from Perseus in September 2005 show that 68 percent of blogs in their
sample were created by women and 58 percent by people under 19.[7]
While it may be difficult to determine how many of the 51.6
million[8] blogs
Technorati tracks actually belong to women,
their findings do show that there are a substantial number of women
blogging. But what does this really mean? Looking back to the early days
of the Internet, when only 20 percent of women were online, I discussed
the negativity and the hostile terrain of masculine cyberspace,[9]
where Web sites created by women or devoted to "women's issues" were
few and far between.[10]
Today the Internet is less hostile in
some respects. Women and men are represented online in both the United
States and Canada in more or less equal numbers. And in contrast to just
a few years ago, there is a plethora of material related to women
online. For example, a quick Google search of "domestic violence"
provides over 75 million Web sites, with the first 100 hits from Google
linking to information from academics, nonprofit and community
organizations, and legal and government resources. When I conducted the
same search in 1995, it provided only a handful of results, none of
which was useful to me at that time.
In a perfect world, the "digital divide"—i.e., the inequities of
income, gender, skills, access, etc.—that has been a key concern of many
Internet scholars would have ceased to exist. But while the number of
women who have access to the Internet has increased substantially, there
are still those who lack access—for example, many women in rural areas.
We also cannot ignore the digital divide in developing countries, where
many women continue to be excluded from the Internet.
Early feminist Internet researchers speculated that, as more women
gained access to the Internet and learned the skills to use it
effectively, women would be less likely to experience harassment and
negativity in the virtual world.[11]
Other feminist researchers
felt that such a broad and generalized approach to women and the
Internet ignored the underlying ideologies concerning women and
technology that are pervasive in our culture.[12]
For these
scholars, more women online would not necessarily mean equity or a
reduction in the virtual resistance encountered by women. While the
prevalence of overt hostility toward women online may have decreased
substantially, women are still faced with barriers and obstacles in the
virtual world, some of which can be seen in the blogosphere.
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