During the past decade, blogging has not only grown, but it has also become a truly international phenomenon: about two thirds of all blogs are written in a language other than English. Blogging in the Global Society: Cultural, Political and Geographical Aspects provides a comprehensive view of blogging as a global practice. Bloggers have created a new virtual world a blogosphere populated with opinion leaders and information purveyors, political pundits and activists, human and animal rights defenders and abusers, corruption fighters and truth seekers, as well as professionals, marketers, advertisers, journalists, celebrities, artists, academics, and bored consumers of all sorts. This book provides a cross-disciplinary analysis of the social, cultural, and political factors affecting blogging practices, tracing the diffusion of blogging as a global communication innovation, uncovering particularities and patterns of adoption in different cultures and geographical regions, and shedding light on trends in the global blogosphere.

The book covers argumentation and conflict resolution from diverse theoretical perspectives: semantic, semiotic, rhetorical, dialectical, and human relations points of view in particular. Several argumentation theories are summarized along with a grounding in general semantics, organizational behavior, total quality management, and ethical interpersonal relations. The concept of a mindful dialectic is introduced and developed in the text. The mindful dialectic involves the pursuit of dispute resolution and conflict management in the most harmonious and least offensive manner available to someone involved in a disagreement. The mindful dialectic prefers the gentle and the genteel to the less than gentle and genteel in human relations while retaining an openness to being other than kind and diplomatic if unusual circumstances demand it. Improving human relations in controversy constitutes the primary thrust of the text and its methods.