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Introduction in the Loop

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In the Loop
Writing, Reading and Publishing Online. The Editorial Design of Personal Publishing

Over the past years, blogging, a field of personal publishing, has become one of the major genres of online publishing. Quite recently, a number of (aspiring) writers, academics and artists have also taken to blogging. In other words, while these recent bloggers publish articles, give lectures and write books, they have now also started to work online, use the tools of the internet; now, they almost instantly publish their (preliminary) thoughts, sometimes discussing them publicly. In their blogs they are caught ‘in the loop’ where browsing, reading, researching, thinking and writing seem to collapse in time. How does this affect and change intellectual production? How do these serious bloggers see this transformation? What is the position of their blog amongst the other publishing media available to them?

I will simply ask how these ‘serious bloggers’ design their online presence, and how they use it in their intellectual practice. What are the decisions that guide the editorial design of their blogs? Some of these decisions concern issues of subject matter (only professional, also personal?), graphic design, choice of software, use of software functionalities (comments, rss, categories, syndication, links, et cetera).

The answers to these questions – gathered from researching a limited amount of ‘serious blogs’ and from interviews with their writers – will hopefully reveal how blogging transforms writing and publishing. Furthermore, it will give insight into the culture of software and into the question how technology, writing and publishing influence each other today.