Blogit ja vastavirta

Luennolla Juha mainitsi, että blogi-ilmiöön liittyy vaihtoehtoisen tai vastavirta-median piirteitä. ZNetin-artikkelissa media-aktivisti Mickey Z kirjoittaa samasta asiasta, liittäen sen myös melankolian politiikaan:

With an innumerable amount of flashy, take-forever-to-load mainstream websites teeming with must-read items about pseudo-people like Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, Bill O'Reilly, and Michael Moore...why do so many bother maintaining a blog that's read by (maybe) 75 outcasts?
In some ways, blogs – an epigrammatic name that encompasses an ever-widening aggregation of personal websites dedicated to a fabulously broad range of subject matter – have replaced the dog-eared notebook into which we scribbled our deepest thoughts...shunning attention, fearing perhaps, we were alone.

Mickey Z näkee blogeille tilauksen käsityksiltään ja lähtökohdiltaan kapeutuvan valtamedian luoman klaustrofobian lievittäjänä:

Running parallel to the fads, trends, and crazes, the corporate media is an equally potent impetus for the proliferation of blogs. More specifically, it's the shrinking limits of debate within the corporate-dominated elite media that have inspired many a blogger.