Audience

Creating information that meets an audience involves a process of development. According to December (1993), this process includes creating, drafting, testing and revising the message so that it meets the audience needs. However, I think it is necessary first, to briefly discuss the context of this information exchange. In this case, the context is the medium (that being the World Wide Web). The delivery medium is a computer screen and therefore the audience at any one time and location, is likely to be an individual or (in some cases) a small group of people.

The ‘American Soldier’ attracts people interested in war, army, discipline, America, Iraq and anyone who is interested in current affairs in general. It also has a wide audience of friends and families who may know someone fighting in the war in Iraq (therefore, there may be a significant and important relationship between the writer and the audience). The ‘American Soldier’ weblog not only provides details of battle (and training) and day to day workings of army life, but also includes the emotional and mental struggles and achievements that a soldier endures. I suspect that this website would appeal to a wider audience than the “To blog or not to blog’ weblog. The site meter (correct as of 30th March 2005, The American Soldier) reveals that 141326 people have visited the ‘American Soldier’ weblog.

In comparison, the blog “To Blog or not to Blog’ has a different and not so specific audience. There are a range of issues discussed by Mick, (the host of the blog) such as the weather, his family, the Terry Schiavo case, music, cricket and football culture, the Danish Royals and abortion. Since there is such a vast range of topics discussed on this weblog, I personally believe it is harder to pinpoint an exact audience. However I assume the audience would be young, mostly male, have an interest in current affairs, enjoy music and sport and would possibly have a family of their own. There have been 6719 people to visit this site (correct as of 30th March 2005, To Blog or not to Blog) so although the amount of people to visit this site aren’t as great as those who have visited the ‘American Soldier’ weblog, it reveals that they both have a significant number of people interested in their weblogs.

An important element of the ‘To Blog or not to Blog’ weblog was the presence of a photo of Mick. According to Nielson (1999) “Users want to know the people behind information on the internet”. Nielson also believes that photos of web authors help to make the web a less impersonal place and therefore build an author- audience relationship and increase trust. “Personality and point- of- view often wins over anonymous bits coming over the wire” (Nielson, 1999). For reasons of security the author of the ‘American Soldier’ weblog can not be revealed, however there is an ‘About’ page were users can learn more about the American Soldier (without knowing personal details).

(There is also the capability to add a photo of my own to this Document Design & Publication Weblog, however I was unable to figure out how this function works, so I apologise!!!)

One thing that each of the weblogs have in common is that the aim of each of the weblog hosts was to create a message that matches a given purpose, audience and medium (December, 1993) and I believe both have achieved this goal. Both weblogs represent an investment of time, money and other resources which are invested in the hope of informing their audiences, developing or supporting relationships and sharing resources (Gahran, 2000).