The present study aimed at investigating the impacts that electronic writing and the computer screen as a medium for text transmission have on writers and readers. Roger Chartier´s descriptions of the three important scenarios which anteceded the electronic writing era - those marked by the scroll, the handwritten codex and the printed book - were used as a comparative base for the evaluation of this new kind of writing on this new kind of medium. Our analysis concentrated on this fourth scenario and explored one of its unique characteristics: the one that enables the interaction between writers and readers on the screens of interconnected computers. In order to do so, we chose a textual space on the internet known as Weblog or blog. The Underlying Discourse Unveiling Method (UDVM) was used to conduct an investigation in which authors of regularly updated blogs were interviewed. Even though at first the authors had said that their decision to create and keep blogs was strictly connected to the possibility of interaction with the readers, a more detailed analysis of the interviews revealed a different picture. They hardly ever interact with their readers.
Blogs; Interaction; Writers; Readers