블로그에 나타난 주체와 매개의 문제

Abstract

The era of new media created a new media that undertakes multiple changes and journalism functions by technological changes of digital media. Journalism is taking roots in the cyberspace as people express their opinions and exchange all types of information on the Internet. This study starts with critical mind, focusing on the characteristics of blog as journalism, on that though the characteristics of blog as journalism is remediation based on traditional journalism, they have different operational methods from the previous mass media. In this regard, two theories are compared to explain the phenomena between blog and the previous mass media. Firstly, to understand uncertainty of an internet space where specific outcomes are not secured, a modern media theorist Mark Poster's underdetermination was applied to blog. Secondly, Bolter & Grusin's remediation theory which states that every mediation is remediation because the new media blogs are not separated from the old media but mediate each other as every media takes its role as a medium was applied to blog. This study tried to connect blog with the theories and discuss its distinctions from traditional media. The theories were also used to demonstrate the characteristics of journalism in blog. The result shows Poster's arguments of finding a new compositional pattern of the main agent. He, especially, notes that internet writing leads the main agent to split. People can be the main agent who writes a message. However, as the role of a producer and a consumer becomes ambiguous, anyone can produce messages and the messages are recreated by other people in blog. Because of that, the fixed meaning of a message has disappeared, but instead undetermined scenes are found. Because most blogs also take contents from other media and remediated by the original press, it is misleading to see them as a real media. That is, almost no contents are created in blogs themselves. As a result, the main agent of a message is not fixed but undetermined, and traditional media is an objective report and real report, whereas blog is open spaces and places for participation where anyone can express their own opinions. In this perspective, it can be interpreted as a media of criticism, introspection, and transformation. Thus, this study analyzed blog, a new sociocultural phenomenon, based on two theories. It is significant because it tried cultural interpretation of the personal communication processes to differentiate it from positivistic methods in studying blog.