Does change in medium mean change in genre? (WK6)

When we hear the term ‘Genre’, we immediately think of words like ‘Horror’, ‘Comedy’, ‘Western’, or ‘Rock’, ‘Pop’ and ‘Alternative’. O’Shaughnessy defines ‘Genre’ as “Groups of texts that share a set of conventional characteristics such as content, narrative, structure, and visual style” (O’Shaughnessy 2012, pg 231) We know these genre’s because texts such as movies, plays and music have been around for a long time, but what about new technologies? What about virtual networks?

In Lucy’s post about ‘Couch surfing and evolving genres’, she talked about how online text, being a cultural, textual product, must surely also have its own genres. The website she hyperlinked (Blog Genre’s) gave a lot of insight into the genres that are present in today’s online texts (specifically blogs). From this I was able to understand the blog genres present in the Care2 network, including Journalistic, group and project blog. A journalistic blog refers to a blog that includes news content, meaning the text is informative to new issues within the world. A group blog simply means something that is open to be contributed to, usually based around a particular topic. And lastly, probably most dominantly a project blog, which refers to an action based network.

The blog side of Care2 is actually quite minimal, however the main two online texts genres I found in Care2 are biographies, and forums. The biographies are evident on the user profiles, as a place people tell their story, a statement about them selves. Whereas in the Group section of the website, people communicate through use of online forums.

However this raises the question that McNeill brings up in her text ‘Diary 2.0?’, “Does going online actually change the genre itself, at the genetic level, or simply alter its features and functions, giving the genre the textual equivalent of blue or brown eyes, or curly or straight hair? “ (McNeill, ­­­­­2011, Pg 314)  Both biographies and forums were present in the world, long before the creation of the virtual world. Which brings up the concept Luyn spoke about in our Lecture, “[does] change in medium mean change in genre?”  

I’d like to argue that perhaps it doesn’t. A biography in a book, or online is still a biography. While I understand that this principle may better apply for places such as Facebook or blog specific sites, in analyzing the network of Care2, it seems that this online content is just the same as it would be if it was offline. Now one could argue that perhaps the writers change their techniques because of the change of audience.  But are we just getting too specific? What significance does classifying down to a ‘t’ really have if the text format is the same but in a different space/audience?  To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how to answer these questions, but its something worth thinking about if you want to completely understand genre theory. 

References

McNeill, L. (2011). Dairy 2.0?: A genre moves from page to screen, in Rowe, C. & Wyss, E.L. (Eds.) Language and new media: Linguistic, cultural, and technological evolutions (pg 314). Creskill, NJ: Hampton.

O'Shaughnessy, M., & Stadler, J. M. (2012). Media and society. South Melbourne, Vic: Oxford University Press. (Pg 231)

Unknown (2013). [Image] Retrieved from: http://www.8-bitcentral.com/blog/2013/ouyafirstTake.html