Central claims about today’s social media culture predate blogging by years

Evidence

In 1995, John Katz wrote in Wired magazine that “net culture, as it happens, is an even greater medium for individual expression than the pamphlets cranked by hand presses in colonial America.” Katz wasn’t referring to blogs; the term “weblog” was coined two years later. He wasn’t referring to social network sites or online newspapers. Instead, he was talking about a sprawling network of textual internet communication that included Usenet, listservs, and personal homepages, which existed years before the dot-com boom, and which were often described using the familiar rhetoric of self-expression, participation, and demo cratization. This rich digital culture gave rise to personal homepages and in de pen dent e-zines, online magazines positioned as alternatives to mainstream media. Often written and designed by dot-com workers at their day jobs, e-zines espoused points of view not found in magazines or television shows. Many were run by women and emphasized detailed personal stories and experiences, or focused on communities of color. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 80

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes the historical lineage this book pursues: it directly frames the question of whether web 2.0 hype recycled older e-zine and homepage rhetoric — connects to any media-history or platform-studies reading. — connects to: Online participatory culture predates the dot-com boom by years — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 80
• SEED: Angles: the forgotten women and communities-of-color e-zine scene as origin of influencer culture; or debunking the ‘social media invented self-expression’ origin myth.

Broader Connections

• Online participatory culture predates the dot-com boom by years #expands (0.88) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 80