Para que serve "blogar"? Na reflexão post factum sobre o terceiro encontro de bloggers (BloggerCon), que teve lugar no último fim de semana, na Escola de Direito de Harvard (EUA), Jay Rosen tem algumas observações de grande interesse sobre o alcance cívico e político desta coisa dos blogs. Continuo a ver, entre nós, menos aquilo a que Rosen alude - a ideia de que a blogosfera ou um encontro de bloggers é assunto, antes de mais, para os que têm o bichinho das máquinas, das tecnologias, da Internet - e mais a ideia de que os blogs são uma espécie de brincadeira, de coisa do domínio do ócio, de quem não tem mais nada para fazer. Ora, na educação, na empresa, no jornalismo,

" (...) blogging is not fundamentally for "techies," it is for citizens, for everyone, by which we mean a good blogger could be anyone. And of course techies heartily agree with this. (That's another thing I like about them; democrats about their own inventions.) BloggerCon is primarily for the producers of blogs, who find they have to gather now and then in order to understand what they're doing , pool their knowledge, look ahead-- and chat each other up. When the tech industry is the base line for normal discussion , these people are called users, because that is how they stand toward the technology. But blogging is about how people stand toward their democracy, toward the public square, toward the First Amendment. Suddenly, when they start to blog, or comment at weblogs, they become producers of argument, of information, of social criticism and civic connection-- producers of media in the same online space as Big Media. And if freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, bloggers own one. A producer democracy is altogether differerent thing from the consumer-driven democracy most of us were raised on. It has a different media system. Dan Gilmor's essential book, We the Media, expresses and inscribes this idea. (...)" (Ler o texto completo de Rosen AQUI.)