MILLER & SHEPARD's Blogging As Social Action: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs

Miller and Shepard emphasize how the 21^st century has redefined the meaning of genre, and rather shifted the focus away from being “concerned with the knowledge and amount of work done”. Genre today is categorized through the new millenniums role in what Miller calls “self-organized communities” which allow multiple bloggers to connect their ideas into a stream. Social media, especially in the field of fashion, is an easy and fast way to advertise… but how do you reach your intended audience outside the google search engine? Hash-tags are now one of the most communal, and often times overused, way to link multiple people on various networks who are involved in sharing common interests.

           

Bloggers and the use of hash-tags allow a wide range of shared pictures and ideas to be posted and connected in mere seconds. The activity of bloggers is now emphasized by the amount of time they put into elaborating their social networks, and posting on events in a timely manner. Once upon a time fashion enthusiasts had to set time aside to watch runway events, and find time for a morning coffee and to scope through a freshly printed magazine. Similar to the archive you find in the first pages of any magazine to direct you to “whats on the cover”, hash-tags have allowed people to read articles or scan multiple different views of what was covered and revealed in Mercedes Benz Fashion week.

Today, any celebrity who attends a fashion show can immediately uploaded to Instagram their front row view of an event. Jessica Alba, for example, has slowed down on major publicity, but still continues to post daily on Instagram. Less than a month ago, Alba posted on #nyfw and created an image that displayed some of her favorite fashions from a designer I haven’t heard about – Narciso Rodriguez. http://instagram.com/p/eGcIJesukO/# Just from posting a single image, I was able to find out what specifically Alba enjoyed about this designer – sharp, short, sexy – and link straight to the designer’s own Instagram, allowing me to look through Rodriguez’s other designs. Instagram is a new way to gain fast access to select celebrities’ personal style views and find out which designers and styles grab their attention.