Dyskurs blogów modowych – między kooperacją a kooptacją
The discourse of fashion blogs: Between cooperation and co-optation

Summary/Abstract: Blogs are often the subject of enthusiastic interpretations due to their democratizing, dialogizing and grassroots potential. This article aims to discover if blogs provide for consumer participation and criticism. As a starting point, this study applies Bakhtin’s framework of dialog to the field of fashion through the mixed methods of critical discourse analysis and content analysis. I show how the features of blogs provide methods for the “monologization” of their discourse. The paper presents the results of my analysis of two of the most popular Polish fashion blogs. My approach focused on reconstructing their process of legitimization through time, showing that they were far from being authentic, autonomous and collaborative. The fashion blogs examined here were consciously commercialized over time, becoming increasingly hierarchical, one-way, market-driven and self-promotional, and thus fully immersed in the logic and the values of fashion industry.

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