"Mommyblogging: Communal Activism or Self-Centered Blather?": Summary

The following is the one page rationale for the panel we will present here: Southern States Communications Convention:

This panel proposes a series of talks and interactions that address the recent explosion in parenting blogs, and specifically the exponential rise of the “MommyBlogger” over the last few years. With Technorati reporting that a new blog appears online every half second, and the “blogosphere” one hundred times bigger than three years ago, it is not surprising that among these ranks are the hundreds of thousands of mothers who get online each day to reflect, interact, and commune over their experiences.

As the phenomenon of mommyblogging continues to escalate, so too does the need for critical analyses of these communities. These analyses must move beyond value-laden questions over the authorial or social “merit” of mommyblogging, and interrogate the rhetorical work mommybloggers do to construct and maintain their communities of practice, and to be “online citizens” within these communities. Using the theoretical frameworks of social networking theory, literary & cultural studies, feminism, rhetoric, and political science, each panelist will reflect on various enactments of the community and the critical issues that emerge. In a cultural context where the new technological medium of the blog is integrated into existing rhetorical practices that interconnect gender, motherhood and community, panelists will debate whether new or transformative articulations of motherhood and community are emergent as a result.

Taking as a theoretical premise that such communities only exist through the rhetorical work that participants do to construct and sustain that community, our first panelist will argue that these mommyblogs provide opportunities to examine not only the critical (and often overlooked) role of gender in web 2.0 communications, but also how these blogs are more than just spaces to “transmit” information about parenting but mutual and dialogic processes through which the distinctive qualities of identity and community are produced.

As the second panelist will elaborate, mainstream coverage of the phenomenon fixates on how these blogs laboriously detail the daily and mundane routines of parenting, and function as online shrines to parental absorption. Pundits linger over how this glut of personal writing that publicizes the private indicates a generation of mothers in profound need of self validation, with an over-obsessive focus on their child’s mental and physical well-being. Poulton will examine how “mommyblogging” connects to a longer tradition of women’s confessional writing and its surrounding discourses, and will consider how the context of blogging potentially transforms or challenges the public/private boundaries of women’s autobiographical discourse.

Third panelist will further contend that these blogs can be perceived as spaces where women discuss, argue, and subvert dominant ideologies concerning motherhood, and so begin to articulate new truths about the identity of ”mom” and establish new forms on communal citizenship. At the 2005 convention of BlogHer, which actively advocates for women’s writing online, the closing session caused a stir when an attendee commented that if “these” women “stopped blogging about themselves they could change the world.” This allusion to the distinction between women who “authored” posts about significant issues, and those who “just blogged” about their personal lives and their role as mothers triggered a significant debate—one that continued (and continues) online among the “mommy-blogosphere.” Alice Brady, creator of the hugely popular parenting blog, “Finslippy,” responded within the audience to the comment, and proclaimed mommyblogging as a “radical act” and so spurred more intense debate about the concept, definition, and politics of the form.

Do mommybloggers newly articulate and construct the meanings of “motherhood” through the processes of online writing and interaction? Is mommyblogging a “radical act?” The final panelist will examine recent business trends connected to mommyblogging (via ventures such as ClubMom.com) and the emergence of the mommyblogger as entrepreneur, and argue that such shifts require careful scrutiny. How much are these trends responsible for the emergence of the “A-list Mommyblogger,” and what is her role within the community? In turn, what is the validity of competitive social networking theory in regards to the community of practice that defines the “long tail” of the mommyblogosphere?

As this panel will demonstrate, “Mommyblogging” is a simple catchall phrase that often elides the rich complexities and differences among the communities of women who blog. The panel will conclude with suggestions for other research trajectories for examining these complexities, and open the debate to the audience.