August 1, 2008
Daisy Pignetti makes a good point in this piece on blogging in relation to New Orleans and Katrina:
They say people make the place.....Key to the mission of this Placeblogging Project is the idea that such bloggers offer “the lived experience of a place” and a “personality” ....The fact that hundreds of locals have chosen to turn to an online medium to share their unfinished stories of Katrina recovery fascinates me insomuch as their writing to represent and persuade can continue to improve outsiders’ understanding of “what it means to miss New Orleans.”
That essay calls attention to the value of local voices when representing the lived experience of a particular place. Pignetti argued that after witnessing the breakdown of communications on local, state, and federal government levels, not to mention the loss of composure on the part of the news anchors and talking heads, there was no better way to raise awareness of the reality of post-Katrina New Orleans than through alternative media genres.
Local communities can use digital media technologies to define themselves in that bloggers can speak more freely, with greater urgency, and their writing expresses a range of opinions that might otherwise go unnoticed. They then form part of a democratized media on the edges of main networks. This democratized media is built on an educated populace and critical thinking about public issues.
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