Transformation of the author image in the blog as a reflection of the genre dynamics of the blogosphere caused by social and cultural purposes (on examples of blogs implementing political topics)

Modern media internet space, giving the opportunity to freely comment the current "agenda" and to read authoritative opinions of experts, has become an ideal platform for the realization of media intentions, which led to the transformation of the blog genre. In this article on the material of blogs on political topics, the author investigates types of the author image as components of a genre model created by T. Shmeleva. Their formation is determined, on the one hand, by functional changes in the blogosphere and, on the other hand, it is determined by the ability to use its new features to implement various subjective intentions. The blog genre at each stage of development receives a certain intentional specificity (the research material is texts of the most popular blog service Livejournal.com). A new type of bloggers is identified, peculiar to the third stage of the blogosphere development (starting from about 2011). This determines the particular thematic specialization of the blogosphere which reflects the range of bloggers' social interests, and allows realizing the indicated aspiration. Political topics are among the most widespread in the blogosphere. During the study, the author found that the current image of the author of the blog genre is qualitatively different from the image at the early stages of the blogosphere (typical for the first stage was "the image of the author of the web diary" - just "for friends"). The change depends on the functional modifications in the blogosphere that are caused by social reasons and expressed in the intensification of media functions. As a result, users of a new type appear on the blog. They realize not only personal but also institutional intentions and use the genre form of the blog-diary for manipulative purposes. The thematic structure of texts in the blogosphere is actively redistributed, and political topics begin to play a leading role. In the study of blog texts the author focuses on model analysis that assumes 3 items: (1) the type of the blogger as a particular member of Internet communication, (2) the type of its self-positioning as a result of the modeling of the image of the author determined by the subjective intention; (3) the type of the image of the author as a result of the embodiment of a specific speech self-positioning strategy (implementing the subjective intention of the genre in a special form). Within these trends blogs with political topics are forming new types of genre texts that implement the results of the transformation of the personal image of the author in the form of: (1) an "external expert" in politics assessing political events (the genre of blog-comment), (2) an "external expert" in politics assessing political developments and calling for the political struggle (the genre of the blog-journalistic investigation), (3) a professional politician close to people (a special use of the blog-diary genre), (4) a professional politician representing an institutionally organized political force (political appeal and other genres of official political discourse).

Keywords

Authors

References