Good, the bad and the ugly: the blog's here to stay

According to research by eMarketer, in 2011 more than 50 per cent of internet users read blogs regularly. And it's easy to see why. The weblog fits easily into our multimedia environment, incorporating aspects of print, audiovisual media and social networking. We can write like a columnist, put up videos like a roving reporter, and keep up friendly comments, links and announcements. For the internet-savvy, the blog's ordinary.

And it's influential. Whether it's the oracular dispatches of the superstar bloggers, or the circuitous, grass-roots posts of ordinary bloggers, this medium packs a punch. Blogs have authority - not only in fashion and celebrity news, but also in politics and the market. They play a part in advertising new products, and lobbying for political change.

This doesn't mean there's been a blog revolution, complete with virtual Kalashnikovs and a dictatorship of the bloggertariat. The blog still doesn't have the cachet of print, even if daily newspapers have their own bloggers, or the odd blog becomes a book. The average Wordpress page will never have a broadsheet's audience or authority. And Twitter and Facebook have burst the blogging balloon for many.

Nonetheless, blogs are still prominent, lucrative and authoritative. They offer current affairs, news, retail, entertainment and virtual community. They matter to readers.

But what of writers, the bloggers themselves? There are no reliable figures of how many Australians blog regularly, but popular blog providers Tumblr and Wordpress report more than 100 million blogs between them worldwide. And according to Technorati's 2011 research, those that do blog are writing more often. Many of these are short posts or images, but many regular writers remain. Given this popularity, it's important to illuminate the practice of blogging, from the author's perspective. What is it doing to us, as users of the English language, as virtual identities?

Most obviously, there are the difficulties with disguised amateurism. The blog gives the impression of a professional product. It's typeset and formatted, with a generous byline and photo. Most posts are illustrated, aping the look of a glossy magazine, complete with pull-out quotes. Yes, there are ugly, busy blogs, but the standard's generally high. Blogs can be slick, personalised, beautiful.

But the style is often more finished than the substance. The amateur blog encourages a false idea of completeness. Our posts can be intemperate, shallow, unreflective or just badly written - but there they are: clean, crisp and out there alongside all the rest. It promotes a kind of premature public face. We present an identity before we've developed the craft to enrich or clarify it.

Behind this is a more serious problem: the absence of collaboration. Even the most gifted professional author has moods and blindspots - let alone the rest of us. We get a rush of blood to the pen or fingertips, and scribble something cruel or lazy. With journalism or book publishing, we've an editor to douse our temper, or give us a literary kick in the backside.

Most blogging lacks this editorial component, and it's combined with instant, free publishing. The price of editorial freedom and instantaneity is obvious: it relies heavily on the writer's discipline and conscientiousness - which might be lacking. We can easily spit bitter spleen onto the screen, complete with the mistakes of haste and anger.

This is morally dubious, because we can be needlessly cruel from afar. Our hobby-horses, obsessions or neuroses are suddenly public, including snarky reviews, ad hominem attacks and warped fan raves. We become less generous, more impatient - less able, in other words, to see beyond our own biases. Good criticism becomes anaemic literary playfighting.

This is also aesthetically problematic, because our writing can be undisciplined, uncultivated, unrefined. Prose loses its beauty or power, and becomes dull, ugly or just illegible. At the very least, we can lose an opportunity for expression: to understand ourselves better, in carefully chosen words.

Of course editors aren't magicians. But they can at least encourage us to raise our ethical and literary ambition, or counsel patience. They provide checks and balances, and blogging software will never take up this responsibility.

In short, blogging combines the illusion of completeness with editorial freedom and instantaneity. In this, it's a chance for us to be hoist with our own petard.

None of this is a problem for disciplined, careful, sympathetic bloggers - the technology won't force them to be otherwise. It might not be neutral, but it certainly isn't villainous. On the contrary: the blog is an exciting, valuable medium. It expands the franchise of mass writing - the trick is to make this new liberty count.

Dr Young is a philosopher, and the author of Distraction: A Philosopher's Guide to Being Free (Melbourne University Publishing).