Author’s Note: To my former professors in literary theory who would find my understanding of Barthes mucky, feel free to bash me to your heart’s content.

For our batch of lazy students in literary theory back in college, Roland Barthes had got to be our favorite critic. For those who don’t know Barthes, he’s a French critic, social theorist and philosopher, probably best known to undergrad students of literary theory for his essay “The death of the Author.”

Here’s an excerpt from the essay:

Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favor of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

In a sheer bastardization of Barthes’, a text can only be open to full interpretation only when the Author (or the authority of the text) is disregarded as a factor because the Author is the limiting factor to any interpretation of the text. Thus, Barthes foregrounds the importance of the reader who, upon consuming the text without the bounds imposed by an Author, has full power over the writing.

Now this Author-”murdering” sentiment is what every reader on the Web gives adherence to (never mind the no-harm-no-foul intentions of the Author). As a case of informal quid pro quo arrangement – “Post whatever you want as long as you let everyone comment any way they want.” Hence, the birth of slanderous writers and the accompanying trolls.

What this leads me is to point out that Barthes’ is seemingly inapplicable to Web 2.0. The plain and simple reason being, the Web’s collaborative nature will always involve a dialog between the Author and the reader. Take any blog post for that matter and no one really does just comment on the matter at hand. It is always the Author who is criticized, never mind if the criticism bears every logical fallacy in the book. Same goes for the Author who, in full defense of his work will be up at arms for any counter-arguments (or poisoning the well tactics). These tendencies as too apparent to ignore (given from personal experience and observations).

The Web 2.0 is a large scale dialog between the author and the rest of the Web. And unlike broadcast media, each one in the audience has the power to react. And Barthes’ proposition is not fit to examine such discourse of the new media.

Hence, the Web 2.0 is best to be studied using another paradigm of criticism – one that’s not devoid of the text, the discourse practice, and the socio-cultural context (one in which Barthes’ cannot apply since he was eager to dispense of the text producer or the Author). This, I think, could be done using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).

I’m a disciple of Norman Fairclough, proponent of CDA, having used his frameworks in my undergrad thesis. Unfortunately, I have yet to read his latest works (if he ever does touch on new media such as the Web).

Enter, Maher. Vincent Maher’s one of the scholars who have tried to shed light into the criticism of new media, and particularly, the blogoshpere. In his essay, Towards a critical media studies approach to the blogosphere, he points out that:

…an effective and appropriate approach to the study of the blogosphere requires more than a normative critique based on ‘professional’ journalistic practices, technical reductionism or an analysis in relation to the misleading dichotomy of ‘legitimate’ versus ‘illegitimate’ media practices. I will draw on the theory of public and counter-public spheres and their role in deliberative democracy (Gimmler, 2001; Downey and Fenton. 2003) to explain the constitutive nature of blogging as a mechanism for socio-political organisation and propose several themes for the study of the blogosphere: economic influence and editorial independence, the convergence of sender/receiver roles in the communication circuit, class and cultural representation, the constitution of digital identity and the limitations imposed by a digital divide in the constitution of an equal-access environment for public deliberation.

I believe Maher’s right. And I will be focusing on writing on this topic for my future observations.

Check out these other posts:

1. Critical discourse analysis and blogging
2. A few new insights on blogging for literacy in the Philippine context
3. Pinoy “citizen journalism”, politics, and campaign period
4. Of blog posts and sweeping statements
5. Wee, I’m cited by the Blog Herald!