Abstract
Public intellectuals are successful suppliers of commentary in the attention market for serious thought. Blogs are a relatively new technology that substantially alters this market. More people can now nurse aspirations to be public intellectuals, but blogs also make plain the difficulties of actually reaching a public in ways that books do not. Blogs also vitiate other romantic ideas about the public intellectual as transcendent figure. Even so, blogs may well provide the services for which transcendent public intellectuals are often lauded better than these figures ever did.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 45-48 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | Society |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 1 2009 |
Funding
This symposium is based on a conference held on May 15 and 16, 2008 under the auspices of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation for its generous support in making the conference possible.
Keywords
- Attention markets
- Blogs
- Internet
- Public intellectuals
- Public sphere
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- General Social Sciences