Conclusion: the old and the new

From the above essay, the following can be drawn. The blogosphere has been perceived by many as a democratic space where one does not perpetually need to play the role of the consumer (Knobel 2005:45). While the nature of participatory culture allows people to know be active participants (Meikle 2005:71), which challenges the traditional paradigms of power, blogs are mostly a mere continuation of the classical power paradigm which can and is restricted by old systems of control. As Cohen (2006:162) says, blogs employ old and new media towards new effects of media, which can be interpreted as him saying that blogs employ old systems towards a new phenomenon, but the system that governs this new phenomenon is fundamentally, old.