Past-Blogging: Defining a Practice

In this paper, the authors conceive past-blogging as a narrative practice which is based on a specific media format. The practice can be initially defined as an account of past events developed according to blogs' most common characteristic: the reverse chronological order of published posts, in which the most recent posts appear on top of the page. Past-blogging practices give rise to cultural products developed in various digital media platforms, especially in journalistic and educational contexts. In order to understand this phenomenon, the authors conducted an empirical and qualitative analysis of 34 cases in which content producers narrate past events by reenacting them or telling their history as if they were happening in the present. The sample – composed by different categories of events, platforms, narrative strategies, motivations for the content production and participation of audience – demonstrates how historical events have been represented within digital media.