In 1440 a German engineer invented a revolutionary device called the printing press. The printing press enabled the distribution of information to large quantities of recipients in mere weeks and months. This device became very popular and was used for centuries as the most effective way to share information with many people at once. This was done through fliers, newspapers, books, catalogues, magazines and many other means. However in 1968 a new invention arose that would see the eventual redundancy of printed text; I speak of course of the internet. Although in its early days the internet did not show much competition to the almighty printing press piece by piece by piece the internet took over, today we can read online newspapers, we can download books, we can subscribe to magazines and download them in PDF format we can check the weather, we can chat to our friends, indeed all previous forms of printed text and even communication seem to have been in one way or another superseded by the internet. In fact the internet has even given way to new forms of text and media such as twitter feeds, Blogs, and Vlogs.
In this essay I have chosen to take a deeper look at these new media, and in Blogs and I wish to investigate the conventions within their constitution, specifically how the author uses this device to offer a particular representation of themselves, their cause and other events and topic surrounding their online uses. First I will elaborate on what a blog is then I will describe in detail the nature and character of the two blogs I have chosen to analyze then to show the demonstration of these conventions within the text I shall outline three emotions which the texts evoke from the viewer and the ways that the text seduces the viewer into agreeing with them.
A blog or web log is a website or part of a website devoted to an individual’s commentary, description of events or display of images or film. Interestingly the word blog can also be used as a verb in reference to the use of such a website. These blogs can vary in subject matter, they can be commercial or personal, professional or comical, and they can be specific or general. In fact, given that thanks to ‘umbrella’ (commercial) sites such as tumblr, blogger, wordpress and Wikipedia blogs; making a blog is free and relatively easy, blogs can be about basically anything.
Also since blogs are often unique and readily available they are not limited their audience. For instance magazines such as rolling stone or blunt may have to appeal to a large number of music fans spanning across many genres a blog however may only include one genre of music since its readers do not have to spend money to view its contents. This means that blogs may be based on subjects rather than categorical topics.
The blog’s I have chosen to analyze, in specific detail are Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation: The Childhood Cancer Blog (ALSF) (www.lemonadeblog.com) and a blog by Ben Heine which is self-titled (www.benjaminheine.blogspot.com). ASLF is a blog created and devoted to raising money to fight childhood cancer, Alexander ‘Alex’ Scott was diagnosed with cancer just before her first birthday, at aged four she showed courage and empathy in her endeavours to fight pediatric cancer and would routinely set up lemonade stands to raise money. Within twenty four hours of setting up her first stand little Alex had raised over 2,000 dollars for the cause. Four years after setting up her first lemonade stand little Alex passed away but her spirit lives on and thanks to her and others inspired by her efforts, over 1,000,000 dollars has been raised for pediatric cancer prevention and treatment . But I go off the point a little bit; this blog is a documentation of information surrounding a foundation inspired by the efforts of the young girl. The foundation organizes events to raise money to be distributed to organisations dedicated to finding a cure for paediatric cancer.
Ben Heine’s blog is a plunge into the universe of a self-professed visual creator and offers a broad view of the inner workings of an artistic mind filled with ideas of optimistic outlooks and solutions to a world filled with countless problems. Such a mind is rare in this post-modern world where the current zeitgeist seemed to have been greatly influenced by existentialism and nihilism. The decision between whether Benjamin Hein is a genius or just another naïve postgraduate with a camera and a pencil is hard to decide; but his works do show cause for some admiration and intrigue. His blog shows in great detail how he goes about most of Europe colliding into people and taking from them what experience he can often with a fancy picture or two along the way. I have included an image that intrigues me from Benjamin Heine’s blog. See below:
The first emotion that the text hopes to evoke from the viewer is empathy. Empathy is defined in the oxford dictionary as: The power of identifying oneself mentally with a person or object of contemplation. In this way empathy is a strange emotion because it has no direct connotation for instance I could empathize with a friend who is lost in the fantasy of a new relationship or could empathize with a friend who has just lost a loved one. The latter is the empathy, which the former blog relies on for the viewer to submit to their cause. It is my estimation that the majority of readers of ALSF would have lost a loved one at some point in their life time.
This coupled with the air of innocence that children have about them makes for a convincing reason to donate to the ALSF which one can easily do thanks to JavaScript (a handy application the right of the screen). Links to the foundations website are handy in ensuring that the convention of emotive language which has been used ever since green grocers found out that by saying their crops were subjectively better than anyone else’s they were able to sell more crops, is blatantly obvious.
This emotional language includes thinking of the parents loss of a loved one and how the ‘innocent’ ‘young’ ‘girl’ wanted one thing, to raise money for other young children affected by cancer. Not only does this emotive language work wonders for the cause but also images of the child appearing sickly and unwell serve to ensure the viewer that paediatrics with cancer need every last cent that you can get from underneath your couch cushions and from the ashtrays of your cars. And if the verbal description of the child, as well as a disturbing visual image wasn’t enough you can view the child speaking about the cause if you so wish. Here we can see three media displaying the emoting of empathy, text, image and video. The three media use conventions such as emotive language as well as sympathy so the viewer can feel sad.
The next emotion I wish to talk about is excitement. This is the feeling that the second blog hopes to evoke from the viewer. Ben Heine visits exotic places all over Europe and takes stunning photos of landscapes, models and objects he sees along the way. These images fill the viewer with a level of intrigue, this level is intrigue parallels that feeling they felt when they were young and visiting comparatively mundane places as a child. Ben Heine uses a variety of editing techniques to make his photography turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. For instance his latest piece features a pair of old hiking boots fore-grounded over a blurry picture of what seems to be a hiking track with a hiker on it. The boots appear as the only colour in the image and underneath the image Heine has written about the trail. The writing asks the question of whose boots these are and what stories do they tell. The piece is quite poetic and it begs the question of ‘what hidden meaning lies beyond the normal?’ Here we can immediately see the use of emotive language. This emotive language evokes a sense of excitement and adventure within the viewer once again but this time not for the great outdoors or for some foreign land but for that old family heirloom tucked away in the garage or the old pendant that grandma left when she passed away.
Lastly both blogs use interaction as a means to get the viewer involved in their text. Before the up rise of the internet, there was really no effective way of immersing the viewer in a text. There is always a really good book or an interesting science paper that may allow the viewer to be so deeply involved in the subject matter that they feel they cannot leave it alone but the internet allows dialog between author and viewer in a way that was never possible before. Both blogs allow this convention of online media.
The first allows and gives examples of how you can help raise money to give to young paediatrics. In fact it shows pictures of people having fun whilst engaged in such activities as fund runs, and lemonade stands of their own. The second allows the viewer to ask Mr. Hein any queries or questions you might have. This level of intimacy with a text was unattainable before the internet.
In conclusion I have shown that internet media use a large number of conventions to evoke emotions such as excitement and empathy within the viewer. For empathy these included, emotive language, as well as connecting the audience to images of familiar under privileged roles in society, this was done via images as well as motion picture. In order to evoke a notion of excitement and adventure a different author used images which utilized shading and an effective use of foreground/background duality connected with emotive language to connect the viewer to the text. Not only did the texts use conventions that were also symptomatic of traditional texts but thanks to the interconnectivity of the internet both texts were able to use interaction as a means of getting the viewer really involved in the subject matter. To think that the distribution of information has come such a long way from when the printing press was invented is feather in humanities cap and I can only wonder what device will eventually make the internet seem as superseded as print is now.
REFERENCES:
‘PENCIL VS CAMERA’
(www.benjaminheine.blogspot.com)
‘THE INSPIRATION BLOG’
(www.theinspirationblog.net)
‘ALEX’S LEMONADE STAND FOUNDATION’
(www.lemonadeblog.com)
