Defined as a “web site on which an individual or group of users produces an ongoing narrative”.
In this day and age, blogging offers one of the fastest ways to communicate ideas worldwide. This form of social media and interaction became popularized beginning in the early 90s, as the computer revolutionize the way we could share our thoughts to a larger audience. Since it’s inception, this new “art” has attracted all sorts of people from aspiring artist, columnist, journalist, and even economist, providing an effective platform from where to launch their ideas.
What does it mean to blog? Well that depends on who you ask. Nevertheless, most bloggers would say that blogging offers them a unique opportunity to share their ideas with the public. This from of literary art has no specified structure which therefore enables the blogger to express his/her idea in their respective fashion. For this assignment, we were asked for find three different blogs relating to Statistics or Economics. In doing so, what I discovered was that each blogger differed from the other in both style, length, citation, posting (frequency of), and response method to their audience.
“Carpe Diem”. This is blog is by professor Mark J. Perry, a professor of Economics and Finance at the School of Management at the University of Michigan. Professor Perry blogs frequently on topics ranging from gas prices, to the state of the housing market in the United States. This past week alone, Professor Perry post roughly 3 blogs daily every day. Reading his post, I noted that Prof. Perry commentaries were a response to articles written in several major publications (newspapers to bi-weekly journals). His commentaries were generally short, giving a quick overview of the topic, defining certain terms and using bullet points.
“Reviving Economics” by Garth Brazelton. Brazelton, works for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, where he serves as the Director of Development Finance. Brazelton has been blogging since 2007 on what I found to be a more specified range of topics compared to Prof. Perry. Most of the posts he writes about deal with what I found to be socio-economic issues ranging from the Apple Vs. Samsung to Chick-fil-A, and the Affordable Care Act. However, unlike Prof. Perry, Brazelton does not offer economic data to back his arguments. Prof. Perry included charts and economic data which in my eyes helped communicate his beliefs on these issues more effectively. Nevertheless, Brazelton included hyperlinks directly into his post to allow readers to jump right to the articles he was commenting on.
“Greg Mankiw’s Blog: Random Observations for Students of Ecomomics” by Greg Mankiw. Just the title of this blog says it all. Greg Mankiw is currently a professor and chairman of the economics department at Harvard University. He’s a well know figure in the Economics world, having made many public speeches in the past and publishing textbooks currently use at Gettysburg College. I found Mankiw’s blog is very general, addressing random topics relating to economics. His style is very relaxed, using youtube videos, comics strips, pictures which I found to be unconventional in the blog world ( I don’t blog much, but most blogs I have visited in the past were just plain text). Either way, I enjoyed Mankiw’s blog. He writes to a general audience of students, teachers, and people who have interest in economics and his topics were about issues very relevant to today and the upcoming election.
cmedwards13 