Friday 23 November 2007 : Zero Comments: Blogging, the Nihilist Impulse. A Critique of Citizen Journalism. The dominant citizen journalism discourse presents itself as an empowering, all-inclusive movement. However, the vast majority of bloggers neither sees itself as a political subject (‘citizen’) or has the ambition to become a journalist. The ‘citizen journalism’ meme was produced by a small vanguard of US-American bloggers (the so-called A-list), who, through their competitive knowledge of Internet applications found a way to intervene in the already declining legitimacy of the Western news media. Instead of a radical critique of news manufacturing and public relations, most bloggers used citizen journalism to create a niche market: how do I fit in?

In my theory of blogging, which recently came out as part of the book, Zero Comments (Routledge NY, 2007) I emphasize the massive, inward-looking, reflective aspect of diary keeping rather than the media related categories such as ‘truth’, ‘news’ or even ‘reporting’. Blogging in the post-9/11 period closed the gap between Internet and society. Whereas dot-com suits dreamt of mobs of customers flooding their e-commerce portals, blogs were actual catalysts that realized worldwide democratization of the Net. As much as democratization means ‘engaged citizens’, it also implies normalization (as in setting of norms) and banalization. We can’t separate these elements and only enjoy the interesting bits.

Each new blog adds to the fall of the media system that once dominated the twentieth century. What’s declining is the Belief in the Message; that’s the nihilist (nihil = zero) moment and blogs facilitate this culture like no platform has done before. Each new blog entry adds to the slow implosion of our centralized meaning structures. Blog software assists users in their crossing from Truth to Nothingness. The printed and broadcast message has lost its aura. News is consumed as a commodity with entertainment value. Instead of presenting blog entries as mere self promotion, we should interpret them as decadent artifacts that remotely dismantle the broadcast model without offering an alternative model, let alone subversive content.

Apart from my ‘nihilism’ thesis, as exemplified through the ‘shocklogs’ genre, I am working on a general theory of blogging together with the US-American scholar Jodi Dean. In this collaborative research we look into the subjectivity formation of blogging and how the software architecture, combined with the general post 9-11 climate, produces a certain kind of blog behaviour.

Friday 23 November 2007
6-8pm, room RHB 309, Goldsmiths, University of London
Free, all welcome.

Geert Lovink is Director of the Institute for Network Cultures, Amsterdam. He is the author of, ‘Dark Fiber’ (2002), ‘Uncanny Networks’ (2002), ‘My First Recession’ (2003) and ‘Zero Comments’ (Routledge New York, 2007).

See Goldsmiths website for more information.