Geert Lovink (Lovink, 22) argues that bloggers are creative nihilists “who celebrate the death of centralized meaning structures and ignore the accusation that they would only produce noise”.
In short, Lovink asserts that the information provided on blogs (as it is supplied by the bloggers) is “noise”. In this case, the term noise connotes the following sentiments;
- The information provided on blogs is “excess” – it is nothing that cannot be already found in the information network revolving around other forms of media
- The information provided on blogs is unwanted and considered irritating .
On the first point:
Some blogs, as Lovink suggests, consist only of republished information, already accessible through other information networks. Links to YouTube videos and text from other websites (e.g. an article from www.theage.com) are examples of this. The blog, however, is a means of broadcasting information which may not, be found so easily elsewhere by the interested readers. Blogs are; a) a space in which information on one specific area of interest can be collaborated so that it doesn’t have to be “found” or so that it is noticed by those interested in it and b) a space for open discourse about the information provided.
If I were to look for information regarding the menswear stores in New York, for example, I would use blog sites made by fashion-forward New York residents: blog sites which do not appear to be associated with any advertising, blogs which list a range of stores and which provide me with links to the shop websites and blogs which reveal reader feedback and an interactive discourse. This information was available on www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com a few weeks ago.
The information found on this blog, ‘The Sartorialist’ (a reputable blog throughout the Western fashion world) not only provided me with a number of opinions on the menswear stores throughout New York but also enabled me to find their addresses, the price range and demographic of each store and their opening hours. Consequently, the blog provided me with more information than I could access on each store’s individual website.
Although blogs such as these may not publish “new” information, they present information in new and useful ways. In my opinion, this is what keeps them from being “noisy”. This notion of cross-referencing and inter-connectedness of the World Wide Web is what Tim Berners-Lee envisions for the “Semantic Web”.
There are, however, some blogs to which the blogger has contributed “new” information. These I would consider (in most cases) innovative, rather than noisy. Such blogs may contain information ranging from progressive findings of a scientific study to daily photographs of people wearing fashionable clothes.
Regarding the second point:
The act of reading a blog is the conscious decision of the reader. If blogs were all considered unwanted, they would attract no readers. Feedback links, “visitor counters” and contributions submitted by blog visitors (e.g. http://www.postsecret.com) demonstrate that there is an audience for online blogs and that they are responding to information which has been uploaded.
Having said this, through the use of links in blog sites, Web users are often lead unknowingly to these blogs. Google search results display web pages according to their association with the search term, not their reliability or their source of information. Blogs are consequently a part of this. Web users may open these blogs, being unaware of the fact they are blogs until actually on the site itself, where author information is made available. In this way, readers have limited control over their exposure to blog websites, what they do have control over is whether they read the content or not.
In short, Lovink’s assertion that bloggers produce noise may be true, to some extent, but I would argue otherwise on the basis that blogs continue to be read worldwide by millions of people; and this must mean that some of the information they provide is useful rather than noisy.
Geert Lovink, ‘Blogging, The Nihilist Impulse’, in Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture, London: Routledge, pp.1-38
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