By: Joshua Steven C. Rose and Socorro Bay H. Sarabia
Professor Walter J. Ong’s book entitled “Orality and Literacy” delved into different factors that may have somehow changed our thought processes, personality, and social structures that resulted to the development of speech and writing. Moreover, the book explained the vast differences and similarities between oral cultures and literate cultures, and even the relationship of their orality and literacy.
Reflecting on what we have learned from Professor Ong, my partner and I thought that we can relate his concept to the emergence of vlogs and their association to blogs. To start with, we all know that a blog also known as “weblog” is a discussion and informational website wherein authors share their knowledge about any topic they desire. It can also be a form of journal or diary. Moreover, the author of a blog is known as a “blogger”. Similarly, a vlog stands for “video blog” which is an enhanced type of blog and is a major trend in the present time that gives the “vlogger” the opportunity to post videos in his/her website about almost anything under the sun to give entertainment, share information, create tutorials and etc.
Both blogs and vlogs have the same objective and that is to communicate to their audience. Same is true with orality and literacy. The only difference is that one form requires a physical presence to be able to be created. Furthermore, although most of the time the receiver of information in these types of media is indefinite and not present, it can still be considered that both approaches are intersubjective. It is because vloggers and bloggers could only come up with their posts’ content if they share a similar consciousness about a certain topic with their target audience. They imagine a series of anticipated feedback in order for them to present information in their vlogs/blogs and for the content to be more interactive and closer to the human world. The emergence of these modern forms of communication gives us a unique view of the communication model that we know because while it uses a medium and reflects a one-way approach of communicating, it is still intersubjective.
References:
Ong, Walter J. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen, pp. 171-173
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