Blog Codes & Conventions – an implied space

Top Posts

misty rain at the lake

asemic postcard 125

The Sage Steampunk Dadaist Pontificates

dadaist collage poem 46

Muse in the Night – Snowy Pagan Museum

asemic snapshots 126 & 128

fibku blue sky reflects

oven pan abstracts 94qb – 94qbt

asemic snapshots – Dakota & Natasha

oven pan abstracts 95qb~qbt~qbv

 

 

One of the interesting things about blogs is that, as a form of social media, it is digital text, as opposed to print media ( printed or hard text). A blog is a separate medium, with its own set of codes & conventions. As a consequence, composing and reading a blog post requires different  Media Literacy skills from print media ( such as magazine, journals, or newspapers)

A simple proof of this – print out a blog page or post. What becomes obvious is that the intended message (content) is disrupted and degraded. As Marshall McLuhan stated, the Medium is the Message. When you attempt to deliver the same message in different media, something in the message changes – the experiences of reading the novel or seeing a movie or serialized  television adaptation are always different.

When we consider that the blog post is digital text, we quickly see that it can covey information that is lost when it is turned into a print media. The following examples of digital text convey information in a blog post, but they can not do so as print text.

Huggin’ The Keys

 

performed (1949) by Armand O. Hug

    Digital text allows the blog post to turn a wide range of other media into content. Print text can only use photographs and illustrations (separate media) as content. Another quality of digital text is that it can have Hypertext links.  This extends the message’s depth and expands context.  There are already 14 links in this post (they all open on separate tabs) that provide additional information and sources.

Frequent visitors to this blog will be aware that I take advantage of the range of media in many of my posts. When I provide links, I make sure that they open in their tab.  I am fascinated by how reader activity shapes the hyperlinked selection of  top posts & pages, modifying the visual impact of the blog. 

A personal quirk of mine, is how I sometimes click likes on other bloggers’ posts. I will, on occasion, try to match up the images. My criteria includes source, colour or monochrome images, and type of art. This creates new context for the other bloggers’ compositions & blog posts.

The examples  of Top Posts & Posts I Liked, are from Nov. 20, 2021. In effect, they are historical artifacts. This demonstrates another characteristic of digital text, it can be dynamic & change. You could visit the same blog post over any number of times, and find the extended contextual layout is different. Do these changes modify how a reader interprets the post?

One final consideration, I’ve noticed that the blog layout, with sidebars and footers, are best viewed on a desktop or laptop screen. The layout doesn’t work well on a tablet. I can not imagine reading a blog post on a phone screen.  If the blog post is altered, depending on the type of device used, does that mean the message has been altered, in a similar manner, as if it was printed ? Would that mean that each digital device, even though they can carry the same social media, are in fact different ?

Hope you visit the links provided.  Do you use these type links on your blogs? Do you use them when visiting other blogs ?

POSTS I LIKED

Door Handle Art  Laurie Freitag Urban Jungle

Brick      Woman No. 5 and Other Nude Art (Collages)

bodily maps      art from Wednesday Studio

autumn composition 2021 7  nailed it again

explosion    recycled doors

thursday doors cordoba    thursday doors 111121

colourful doors of Mexico   Art of Pablo Picasso

Nils-Ole Lund: Collage Artist    Collage Poem Art – Imagine