Blogging...

The idea of blogging can be suggested to have been derived from the concept of open publishing which Graham Meikle (2005) characterises as process where no gatekeeping is exercised and “the content if generate by anyone who decides to take part”. It is due to the fact that anyone can contribute to this public domain of information that people now see a shift in power relations (Cohen 2006:163). The traditional paradigm of power was straightforward in that the dominant party was that of the producer and information and messages flowed in a linear pattern to the audience (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler 2005:6). Audiences, as O’Shaughnessy and Stadler say, undoubtedly shape such information that is being placed into the public sphere, however the shift the blogosphere is creating is that audiences no longer need to rely on media conglomerates to produce the content they want, they are now able to generate such content themselves (Rosen 2005:27).

Another point to note about the blogosphere is that because of the way it has been crafted, the idea of intellectual property is difficult to impose restrictions on. All the content that is published on blogs can be considered as intellectual property because as Cubitt (2005) says, as long as an idea is expressed in a tangible, material form, it can be regarded as intellectual property that can be distributed throughout the internet and other media platforms. In the case of food blogs, even though a recipe may be counted as the author’s own creation, the recipe is not subject to copyright laws under the U.S copyright laws (U.S Copyright Office 2006) however all accompanying text may be deemed possible to copyright. The blogger ‘Terms of Service’ document states that blogger does not exercise control over the content being posted which means that these bloggers will probably face other forms of limitations with regards to their blog posts. While it seems as though blogging will then allow everyone to be heard because there is no gatekeeper, other social issues may place restrictions on these bloggers.