Blogging as participatory media practices and new public sphere constructors in Ukrainian society

New and social media are changing the relation­ships of individuals to society. First of all, media in the era of democratization have produced new ideas of what it means to participate in social, political and institutional life.  It, really, deals with possibilities of new media technologies, especially, Internet, in processes of democratization and expansion of personal freedom. Secondly, new media have changed the design of social space, a sphere of publicness. The traditional media reflect the sphere of public, as far as social media, such as blogging, microblogging, and social networking structuralize the public sphere, produce different types of public identities: publics, mass audience, interests groups, and virtual communities.

Blogs (and social networking sites in general) illustrate the fusion of key elements of human desire: to express one’s identity, to create community, to structure one’s past and to present experiences. Blogging also expresses the moment when users got some sort of control over the information age, and a decision to share private information—to blur the line between the private and the public spheres. Blogging is the event of “rewriting oneself” through interaction with the audience. Unlike writing a traditional diary, blogging is a process of linking two or more individuals. The character of blogs as simultaneously private and public enables the formation of both individual and group identities.

The specific character of blogging development in contemporary Ukraine is following. The main senses of blogs creators: contacts, self-presentations, creation of a political image, relaxation, making and maintaining of social relations, individual reflection, psychotherapy. The main goals of blogs readers: keeping in touch with relatives and friends, information receiving, gaiety and diversion, socialization, public opinion monitoring. To conclude we can characterize blogs as an instrument of individual and political communication, but also as one of self-organizational form of civil society.