Mommy Blog Lines: Tal(k)ing Care

                The response to mom blogger Josi Denise’s statements on why she chose to end her blogging practice (discussed in the previous post ) from other bloggers was mostly negative with many taking offence to both what she said and how she said it. I’ve selected counter points, from a handful of those that chose to respond with their own posts, that I found to be both interesting and productive as they coincide with the discussion of some of the benefits to online communication and interaction brought up by digital media scholar Mary Chayko in Portable Communities: The Social Dynamics of Online and Mobile Connectedness .                  Many took issue with Denise applying her criticisms to all mom bloggers in general. They felt that although some of what she talks about does happen (and within all blogging genres), lumping mom bloggers together as if they are all the same is unfair. Also stating that they, as well as many others, do not engage in the behaviours s

                 Back in May a hot topic in the mommy blogosphere was a post by blogger Josi Denise explaining why she was shutting down her mom blog “The American Mama” (currently offline). Many found the post inflammatory as Denise explained her reasons for quitting from the perspective of exposing the faults and fallacies of the mom blogging industry with a highly critical and harsh tone. Without delving into the gossip side of things or the resulting spectacle as her post was circulated across the web and picked up by several online news platforms ( such as Time    and the NY Post ) and responded to by other bloggers who strongly disagree with her, in this post I’ll be discussing how a few of her points relate to some of the concerns within critical media theory as presented by political theorist Jodi Dean in “Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics” .                  Leaving behind as much of the “ranting” from the post as possible, i