The Construct

Who would have thought that a thesis on blogging would require so much theorizing. Since I have yet to encounter other critical discourse analysts’ application of methods and frameworks to blogging, I am in the process of shaping a framework and method that I can apply to my target data. However, in the process of settling with the basic concepts that I am to use, I meet a roadblock as to how I’d define ‘authority.’

As with words, one can go to the most general definitions of the word and consult a dictionary for denotations. Here’s a part of Merriam-Webster’s entry that I find readily applicable to this discussion:

Noun
1 a (1) : a citation (as from a book or file) used in defense or support (2) : the source from which the citation is drawn b (1) : a conclusive statement or set of statements (as an official decision of a court) (2) : a decision taken as a precedent (3) : TESTIMONY c : an individual cited or appealed to as an expert
2 a : power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior b : freedom granted by one in authority : RIGHT
synonyms see INFLUENCE, POWER

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Forget experts. Forget doctorate degrees. Forget international recognition. Forget the Nobel Prize. Who needs to uphold some elite group of people as a bastions of knowledge? We have Wikipedia anyway.

This leads me to ask, is the Web 2.0 subliminally killing authority? Now I’m in a quandary. In my previous post, I was thinking that Barthes’ concept is not applicable to the Web. But aren’t we killing authority. In the larger scale that’s what the Web 2.0 is trying to do – to force the collaborative mass effort to be the source of knowledge over that one “expert.” However, don’t the ideas of collaboration and audience feedback acknowledge the existence of the Author?

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