There's been an interesting exchange occurring on the nettime mailing list discussing the merits of subjecting blogging to serious analysis. Though the thread is now a few days old, I've only just had the chance to read it. Before I move into my own take on the issue, I want to point out that I do recognize the irony of blogging a response to a mailing list thread critically analyzing the very same practice. Perhaps I feel more comfortable opining in a medium that is generally viewed as more public.

The question of the legitimacy of the study of blogging was raised when one participant compared a blog to a pen: a mere tool of expression that does not limit or direct its uses. The respondents certainly addressed this well, but to reiterate, it might be more appropriate to compare the keyboard to the pen as opposed to the blog. When we use the term 'blog' we imply far more than simply the conventional structure of an individual webpage lumped into this category. Rather, 'blog' implies a network of writers and readers, with individuals very often playing both roles. This is why we might distinguish between a 'homepage' and a 'blog' - the latter implies an assemblage the former merely implies accessibility. The pen/blog distinction is much like that between newsprint/newspaper. Yes, a newspaper is certainly no more than the physical item of newsprint and ink, but to refer to a 'newspaper' is to reference the institution (the social assemblage) enveloping it.

So, certainly a pen and a blog are different and the study of blogs is more accurately the study of that which surrounds the raw medium - it is 'blog' as metonymy.

Secondly, the initiating article of the thread itself ("The Banality of Blogging") makes a bit of misstep in its narrow view of 'blogging'. While its analysis is insightful and certainly worth a thorough read, its conflation of personal blogging with all of blogging fails to recognize the different types of networks and, ultimately, assemblages that form around blogs of a different purpose. Personal blogs (by which I mean blogs that are used to express the events of the blogger's daily and emotional life) are quite different in function and network structure than business blogs, political blogs, or tech blogs and so on. The ways these different spheres interact within themselves are often quite different and worthy of analysis in their own right.

To sum up, not only are blogs worthy of analysis as a medium, but this analysis must become more nuanced in order to fully examine its impact.