This week had your two posts
Are You Blogging Your Passion or Blogging to Blog and Blogging Prejudice: Aren’t We Past This Yet? struck a chord with many bloggers, as did Learning Lessons from The Planet Blog, and both are getting more traffic as others think this through and write about it on their blogs. along with the new blog being tried at http://blog.pandemicflu.gov/ Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog, May 22 – June 27, 2007

These 3 things are related plus your earlier blogger jogger of does your blog change the world (some time ago). Risk communication is extremely important and the next pandemic will have systemic effect. One valuable aspect of blogging and the free platforms such as WordPress.com is to enable the public/community to involve their institutions, such as governments, schools, etc., in mundane matters of significance. This is “distance communication” in that community is often treated as supplicants by their institutions (vertical) and also distant in that my region, for example, has a population density of 1/2 person per square mile (100 to nearest hospital, by air; biggest town is 400 miles from nearest Wal-Mart).

But something doesn’t seem to be working at the pandemic blog.

Part of it may be the particular structure and design (best read by feedreader, including comments). The Secretary of HHS is new to blogging, but so is Dave at the Planet. Both have tech support (megabucks at gov). Maybe trying to involve one’s government isn’t possible with a blog and a bulletin board is. Maybe the commenters and the bloggers have entirely different ideas about what and why they are blogging. Where and who is the reader? [The blog is moderated by HHS].

Overall, pandemic blog strikes me as a series of Vu-graph or presentations of position papers, not discussions (with some exceptions). There are very few different commenters, nearly all of whom have been blogging on bird flu, except for HHS folks. (The blog is not well-advertised) The writing appears to be directed from each participant to some other, off-site reader?

Maybe it is just me. A web log is a tool, for me and cannot by itself be all of community or public involvement. However, I think I’m asking, are there limits to blogging as communication? Are some audiences inaccessible to blogging? I don’t think the topic or the content is the limiting factor (It isn’t necessary to understand the content to ask.) Am I expecting too much and/or too early of blogging?

[yes, I was an early commenter and a duplicate by accident, too!]