Blogging Communities in the Blogosphere

Every blog connects via blogging communities and formed the blogosphere.

(Source: eWriting, 2008)

What are blogging communities? According to Bock (as cited in White 2005), he stated that "Communities are characterized by three things: common interest, frequent interaction, and identification", and these three things must all present for an online space to form a community. Therefore, we can define blogging community as an online community where bloggers and readers who share the same interest connect and interact with each other via blogs as their platform.

Three forms of blogging communities.

(Source: The Knowledge Tree, 2006)

As blogging is constantly growing, White (2006) has identified three forms of blogging communities, with a wide variety of hybrid forms emerging the three.

A mind map showing how blogger centric community works.

(Source: The Knowledge Tree, 2006)

1.   Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community

• It is formed when the focus and power of the community is firmly control by the central identity, the blog owner. Readers return to the central blog, comment, and get to know blogger and the community of commentators. (eg: KennySia.com)

The diagram shows the relationship within

a central connecting topic community.

(Source: The Knowledge Tree, 2006)

2.   Central Connecting Topic Community

• It is formed when various blogs that share common interest or passion are linked together. Both power and identity are distributed across the community. As they expand, they form a network. (eg: Global Voices)

The formation of boundaried communities.

(Source: The Knowledge Tree, 2006)

3.   Boundaried Communities

• It is a collection of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform. This form of community often has other tools such as discussion board, social networking features, wikis and instant messaging built in. (eg: LiveJournal, MySpace)
  

It is relatively easy to create a blogging community. We can see its structure through the example of Global Voices community. All blogs are linked through hyperlinks, in the form of blogroll, links to other blogs within blog posts, tagging, aggregated feeds (using RSS), trackbacks and comments (White 2006). Readers are able to link from one blog to another to access more stories or information on a particular topic that they are interested in. They will be able to get hold of things happening in the blogospheres of every corner over the world.

All in all, a blogging community connects all bloggers and it can only exist with the active participation and contribution among bloggers and readers.

Reference

White, N 2005, 'How Some Folks Have Tried to Describe Community', Full Circle Association, viewed 11 April 2010, < http://www.fullcirc.com/community/definingcommunity.htm >.

White, N 2006, 'Blogs and Comunity: launching a new paradigm for online community?', The Knowledge Tree, viewed 11 April 2010, < http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community >.