Supporting the notion that blogging is a form of storytelling:
Michael Heraghty and Gerald Adams prepared a 500-word proposal for the European Conference on Weblogs, 2003.
The authors contend that if no story moves through the “blog,” it is not a blog. Ulp — beginning to wonder if my blog is a blog on that basis. Perhaps mine is the story of my exploration of story.
Key points that especially resonate with me:
The blog is a narrative form optimized for the web. All weblogs draw from a set of visible features and functions, and underlying motivations, that make them ongoing “conversations” among bloggers and readers – stories with pasts, presents and futures. Unlike portal sites, blogs are not juxtapositions of datum flotsams.
A site may utilize blog-style UI conventions (calendar, archives, etc.) but if it has no underlying narrative – no story moving through a past, present and future – it is not a blog.
Blogs feel more human than non-narrative sites.
(Postmodernists might argue that all blogs/identities can be interpreted as fictions!)
The weblog combines interactive narrative with notions of identity, authenticity and community, in a manner suggestive of pre-literate, oral/tribal communications networks.
The blog is not just a narrative form; it is a disruptive narrative form.
