BLOGOSPHERES: A ‘COUNTER-PUBLIC’ TO THE IRAQ CONFLICT

by

Una Dirks

March 20, 2005

The Iraq war 2003 has triggered a great amount of entries into weblogs, respectively warblogs. As the bloggers’ involvement has not come to a standstill since and the information policies of the traditional mass media are highly challenged by the bloggers’ practices, this paper aims at providing a definition of the main features and functions of weblogs that may serve as an explanation for their inflationary use. 

Weblogs consist of a closely knit web that connects comments on specific internet-links with chatrooms, mailinglists, newsletters, search machines or online-journals. Their main features are

• Individual communicators as members of a world-wide discourse community, fusion of traditional media roles like producers and receivers of news (cf. Castells 2003: 398)

• Application of reflective practices: e.g. selection and critical evaluation of media discourse topics and the ‘spin’ they have been given

• Dedication to non-commercial interests

• Intertextual linkages between different text genres.

Due to these features, weblogs can be conceived of as blogospheres. They give bloggers the opportunity to take part in a discourse by highlighting specific information that has been left out by the agenda setting of politicians and the mass media as well as by challenging the legitimacy of certain ‘information’ and evaluations that prevail in the public sphere of newspapers, radio and TV-programmes. Therefore, the blogosphere generally is associated with the creation of a ‚counter-public’. With regard to the US-American warfare plans in Iraq, the globally connected counter-public continuously questioned the relevance of the ‘official’ war reasons – particularly on behalf of the ostensible disposal of Weapons of Mass Destruction by the Iraqi president and an alleged terrorist companionship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda – that in hindsight have turned out to be wrong (cf. http://www.ceip.org/files/Iraq/index.htm). Along with that, bloggers from all over the world did not stop drawing attention to the fact that the ‘coalition of the willing’ launched a pre-emptive military strike that violated the UN-Charter (Ch. VII; Art. 2, No. 3-4), the Geneva Conventions and the constitutions of all democratic countries, because the supposed weapons had not been used for a military attack against the warfaring countries. 

Although there are many ways of coping with the US-American ‘spin’ (see for example the satirical websites at http://politicalhumorabout.com/od/wmd that are linked with all sorts of political statements and documents providing internet users with multifarious perspectives on the same topic at issue), I would like to focus on two main weblog genres that significantly differ from each other in their structures and modes of agency being dedicated to a 'counter-spin':

1. The „journal-style blog"(Blood 2002: 11ff.) mainly comprises journal entries, e.g. by private persons or journalists who have experienced the Iraq war and its aftermath: http://dear_raed.blogspot.com, http://afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com (downloads 20.03.2005), http://electroniciraq.net/news/iraqdiaries.shtml, http://www.back-to-iraq.com (downloads 21.04.2005),
   http://www.kevinsites.net (download 20.03.2005; Kevin Sites is a freelance writer for NBC News in Asia. During the Iraq war he worked for CNN. The broadcasting company forbade him from running the online-journal), http://www.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2003/reporters_log/ (download 21.04.2005).

2. The "filter-style weblog" (Blood 2002: 11ff.) mainly contains comments on internet links. The following weblog examples usually have started as initiatives of anti-war movements against the Iraq war (all downloads 20.03.2005):
   http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/index.html, http://unitedforpeace.org, http://www.antiwar.com, http://newest.warblogging.com, http://stopwar.org.uk, http://www.biased-bbc.blogspot.com, http://www.instapundit.com.

Many of the weblogs mentioned above include a link to the ‘Body Count’-websites that try to keep track of the amount of victims caused by the Iraq conflict (http://www.iraqbodycount.net). Background information on the history of Iraq quite often is drawn from the wikipedia pages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page). 

Finally, a German website of the 'Friedenspolitischer Ratschlag' should be recommended: It renders a very detailed chronology of incidents leading to and ensuing the Iraq war (e.g. http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden/regionen/Irak/chronik/03-05c.html).

last update: 21.04.2005

Selected Literature on 'weblogs'/'blogospheres':

Blood, Rebecca (ed.) (2002): We’ve got blog: How weblogs are changing our culture. Introduction by Rebecca Blood. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing.

Bucher, Hans-Jürgen (2004): Internet und Krieg. In: Martin Löffelholz (ed.), Krieg als Medienereignis II. Krisenkommunikation im 21. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. pp.275-296.

Disclaimer

The weblogs and websites indicated on this webpage by Prof. Dr. Una Dirks only serve as examples for blogospheres of the Iraq war and its consequences. They are not supposed to cover a complete collection of all relevant weblogs or websites. If errors are brought to her attention, she will try to correct them. However, the author accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever with regard to the information presented in the above-mentioned weblogs and websites.

Copyright notice

Quotations taken from the text "Blogospheres: A ‘counter-public’ to the Iraq conflict" by Una Dirks are authorized, provided the source is acknowledged.

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