Blogs: Widecasting And Narrowcasting

January 29th, 2006 by Fernando Gros

Recently, I men­tioned the idea of shal­low­cast­ing, which has came up as I was think­ing about blogs to add to my links. I’m not trying to create a string of “how-to-blog” rules, but I do notice I prefer blogs that are not just content-rich, but also link-rich (and even con­ver­sa­tion rich). To me this adds a degree of depth to the exper­i­ence of the blog. By con­trast, I don’t like to link blogs that have no com­ments or few links because they tend to provide little by way of dis­course con­tetxt; they feel con­ver­sa­tion­ally shal­low to me (des­pite how good their main con­tent may be).

So I have been toying with the terms, shal­loc­ast­ing and deep­cast­ing, to explain this issue. It is already pretty obvi­ous that the exist­ing media terms, broad­cast and nar­row­cast can be applied to blogs. In fact it seems clear to me that the blog­sophere is sim­ul­tan­eously becom­ing a broad­cast net­work for some and noth­ing more than a nar­row­cast net­work for others. My hope is that shal­low­cast and deep­cast will be two ideas that help us think a little more about the way the struc­ture of the blog shapes the exper­i­ence of the blog.

Saying a blog is shal­low­cast does not mean it has poor con­tent (some shal­loc­ast blogs have fant­astic writ­ing). Rather, it is a call on the exper­i­ence and rela­tion­al­ity of the blog. A shal­low­cast blog has a narrow focus, it draws you in spe­cific­ally to its con­tent, but in some ways is like a room with only one or two doors (even if it has a great view out the window).

By con­trast, a deep­cast blog has many doors, and pos­sibly many ways of enjoy­ing the view. It draws you not just to con­tent, but into con­ver­sa­tion. This may be because of extens­ive com­ments, or because of a wealth of links, or because of breadth of sec­ond­ary inform­a­tion (which in a blog usu­ally appears via the sidebar).

Deep­cast­ing is no guar­an­tee of either the qual­ity or pop­ular­ity of a blog. There are some massively sucess­ful shal­low­cast blogs and some woder­fully designed, rich, yet obscure shal­low­cast blogs. How­ever, I think the ques­tion of whether to aim to be a shal­low­cast, or deep­cast blog is one that some­times reveals a great deal about the appoach a blog­ger takes to their work (and to the rest of the blogosphere).

Without doubt xfn, or rela­tional net­wrok­ing prom­ises to be a big tool in expand­ing deep­cast­ing. I look for­ward to imple­ment­ing it in due course.

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Posted in Blogging, Trends | 7 comments

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7 comments on this post.

  1. Duncan:

    January 29th, 2006 at 5:18 pm

    Hi Fernando. The idea of shal­low­cast­ing, deep­cast­ing and rela­tional net­work­ing in blogs is food for thought. Occa­sion­ally I’m temp­ted to remove a few links from my blogs as they’re not recip­roc­ated. In some cases the links on my side­bar are to blog­gers who are quite dif­fer­ent to me. I’ve appre­ci­ated your occa­sional com­ments at Pacific High­lander. They’ve cer­tainly added to my rela­tional connectivity.

  2. Fernando Gros:

    February 10th, 2006 at 7:26 pm

    Thanks. I’m going to post more on this because I sus­pect the issue of how rela­tional blogs are will be one of the thrends for this year.

  3. Pacific Highlander » Blog Archive » Widecast or Narrowcast:

    February 12th, 2006 at 3:06 am

    […] Fernando Gros posted this morn­ing on widecast­ing and nar­row­cast­ing: “I do notice I prefer blogs that are not just content-rich, but also link-rich (and even con­ver­sa­tion rich). To me this adds a degree of depth to the exper­i­ence of the blog. By con­trast, I don‚Äôt like to link blogs that have no com­ments or few links because they tend to provide little by way of dis­course con­text; they feel con­ver­sa­tion­ally shal­low to me (des­pite how good their main con­tent may be).” […]

  4. Steve:

    September 21st, 2007 at 4:28 am

    Fernando,
    I am a Com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­fessor coming in late on the new media train. I don’t have a blog, myspace account, face­book account, or web­site. But, I am teach­ing a course called Trends this semester and wanted to address how con­ver­gence of new tech is cre­at­ing a gen­er­a­tion of media rich con­ver­sa­tion that seems very shal­low, par­tic­u­larly tex­ting. I thought of using the term ‘shal­low­cast­ing’ but wanted to check if it is already coined. Tada, it is! You said it! Did you say it first? Doesn’t matter to me. I still like the term and how you have taken it beyond my concept of it and include its coun­ter­part of ‘deep­cast­ing’. By the way, you ever read any of Howard Rheingold’s stuff?
    Steve

  5. Fernando Gros:

    September 27th, 2007 at 8:52 pm

    Steve — I’ve not read any of his books but found my way to his amaz­ing blog a while back. How­ever, I’ve now decided to pick up a copy of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.

  6. Steve:

    October 11th, 2007 at 12:34 am

    Fernando,
    I was intro­duced to Rhein­gold in a gradu­ate stud­ies course on Media and Tech­no­logy taught by Patrick Burkart. He’s done a lot of writ­ing him­self in the field of New Tech.
    Steve

  7. Fernando Gros on Widecast and Narrowcast Blogging » Duncan Macleod:

    July 28th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    […] Gros posted this morn­ing on widecast­ing and nar­row­cast­ing: “I do notice I prefer blogs that are not just content-rich, but also link-rich (and even […]