e-Citizens : Blogging as democratic practice

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.