Blogging the Pain: Grief in the Time of the Internet — Page 9:
41 As the comparison of Barry’s and Lund’s narratives reveals, however, we do not have to examine completely new kinds of self-representation on the Internet in order to find new forms of expression. Blogs, even if they consist of nothing but written words, are based on a different mode of writing and publishing. Virtual and printed texts do not only differ in terms of their technical and formal preconditions—like an audio book and a printed book—but their different genesis decisively influences the way in which these two different forms of writing mediate experience. The writing process thus shapes a text as essentially as traditional narrative categories such as topic, imagery, or perspective. Blogs, therefore, do not just mirror familiar forms of writing on a computer screen, but they reinvent and redefine these forms, creating new stories and new narrative modes. This innovative potential of virtual forms of life writing has largely been ignored in the past; as the comparison between Lund’s and Barry’s narratives reveals, however, the Internet and its modes of expression certainly deserve further critical attention.