I still don't know if it's a blog, but I'm fascinated by Flu Wiki. We talk about Utopian endeavours; this seems to be one in its purest form. On my blog, I suggested that the site has an agenda, which was to motivate people to care/do something about the bird flu. This prompted a response from Melanie, one of the creators, who said, "The Flu Wiki is an attempt to be a site which simply posts the best information we have. It takes no political point of view, but wishes to give the power of information into the hands of communities to do what they must to deal with avian flu." We had a polite back and forth about Flu Wiki via email, and she stated that their only goal was dissemination of information.
I think Flu Wiki has appeal on all rhetorical levels. It has ethical appeal because it presents itself as an informational site. If you look at it, it looks very serious, appropriately so because it's dealing with a life-or-death issue. It also provides information in a formal manner, with lots of links to national and international governmental and health organization sites. So there's a "we know what we're talking about" authoritative rhetoric to the site. Indeed, that was one of the purposes of the site, according to Melanie: "Flu Wiki is considered an authoritative source by the professionals."
There is also logos, logic appeal here. If you want to learn about the flu, here's info. If you want to learn how to contact your government, here's the address. If you want to help, here's some phone numbers. Lots of logical explanation of information.
Finally, we have to acknowledge that there is also an emotional appeal to the message. In this current environment, we can't have a flu discussion without at least unconsciously thinking, "Oh no, are we all gonna die?!!" Consider this quote from the site:
"Once the virus spreads easily from human to human and becomes a pandemic (many disease experts say when, not if), we will be confronting a worldwide public health emergency with hundreds of millions of people infected."
Factual? Seems so. Authoritative? Yes. Emotional? Yes! How can you not read that and feel a sense of panic or fear?
I think that's what Flu Wiki is all about: providing authoritative information that is useful to all kinds of groups on the flu, and yes, to motivate people to do something about it, to push their governments to take action. Just the fact that Flu Wiki is not a part of Wikipedia, for example, is a message that the bird flu issue is too important and too big to bury in a general purpose site.
Flu Wiki also helps define the power of blogging rhetoric. Melanie wrote that the site was started as "a small site for practitioners, professionals and the kind of flu nuts that gather on the flu threads." Now it's taken off and being moved to a larger server. It's become Melanie's full-time job (as part of a larger organization), and she went to a flu conference last month to discover she and her co-founder were "famous." As she says, "This is a very strange and unexpected story."
I have been concluding that blogging is less about info transmission, and more about interhuman connection building. Now I'm re-thinking that. Bird flu is definitely a hot meme right now, with good reason. Everyone is talking about it (and hopefully some people are actually DOING something about it). Did Flu Wiki start the meme? Probably not, but it has definitely helped spread the meme and increase the power and authority of its message. As Melanie says, it's taken off like crazy and "the response from the Web has been astounding." So Melanie and company started talking, and eventually, a lot of people started listening. An persuasive example of the ability of blogging to impact important issues.
Update: Melanie responded to my comments on the power of blogging: "Your essential insight about community is correct: I have a dear friend who is an anthropologist who's job is very similar to the new one I'm starting next month. I showed her blogs for the first time a year ago. She came back to me a few weeks later and remarked, 'This platform is the most powerful tool for community building since the development of literacy.' Not the printing press, literacy itself."
Also, as another example of the spreading meme, she writes, "...my 15 minutes of fame from Flu Wiki has been that I give a lot of interviews to the press. The most recent will be in USAToday and National Journal this Thursday."
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4 comments:
Quite agree with your & your friend's comments about the interhuman community building power of the 'sphere.
But would suggest, to get closer to the root, that what makes the community build is the simple act of communication... people letting each other know what's on their minds, their hearts, or in the case of vloggers and such what images blossom in their eyes.
The 'sphere is so revolutionary (evolutionary?) because it's a communication tool. Simply. And infinitely expansively.
C'mon ,Joe, it can't be that simple an explanation as merely communication (or we've wasted a semester). I can communicate with a phone call, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same effect as a blog comment. Just the fact that it's "permanently" inscribed creates a feeling of higher importance to the words.Also the instant spreading of the communication widens it's importance. And on and on , as we've endlessly discussed.
C'mon ,Joe, it can't be that simple an explanation as merely communication (or we've wasted a semester). I can communicate with a phone call, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same effect as a blog comment. Just the fact that it's "permanently" inscribed creates a feeling of higher importance to the words.Also the instant spreading of the communication widens it's importance. And on and on , as we've endlessly discussed.
Here is an excerpt from my proposal for teaching a blogging class:
"This is the first time in history that information can be relayed instantenuously from any person to any other person on the planet, i.e., not just one-to-many (books, newspapers, radio, television) or one-to-one (speech, writing, telephone), but also many-to-many. Wealth, posession of infrastructure, and high-level technical skills are not neccessary any more, thus all citizens should be able to participate in a global dialogue.
The blog (or weblog) is the simplest, most flexible and most dynamic tool in such communication. Online access, either at home, at work, or in public libraries, is all that is needed. The consequences of this technological advance are difficult to predict, but many areas of life, including politics, journalism, education, business and science are likely to be greatly affected."
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