Blogging

Blogging: How Our Private Thoughts Went Public examines self-representational writing from its historical roots in personal diaries to its current form in personal blogs. Widely available on the Internet, personal blogs are the latest form of an ever more public writing style of self-reflection. Utilizing Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of public, private, and social, this book delves deeper into the question of public versus private and provides an entrance for Arendt’s work into today’s mediated world. Arendt’s understanding of public, private, and social allows us to better understand the need for boundaries and for both public and private spaces in our lives. Interpersonal communication theories, including boundary management theory and parasocial framework theory, help to better understand how people navigate public and private boundaries in communication. These theories provide a philosophical view of our overshared and overmediated world, and, specifically, how it affects our communication styles and practices.

At last, a book about blogging that draws its inspiration and template not from politics but philosophy ranging from Aristotle to Hannah Arendt. Beautifully written, deeply contemplated, entirely convincing, Wolfe’s book is a signal contribution to media theory and the world at large.

Kristin Roeschenthaler Wolfe is instructor of public speaking and rhetoric and composition at Pennsylvania State University.