Blogging politics in various ways: A typology of French politicians’ blogs

The article examines innovative ways of genre-mixing in an emergent genre, the politician's blog. Based on prototype theory, the study presents a division of French politicians’ blogs into sub-genres. The criteria used to distinguish these sub-genres are medium, communicative purpose, participant roles and rhetorical structure. The material used in the study consists of 80 French politicians’ blogs and the writings posted on these blogs during the month of September 2007, which was a period outside actual election campaign. The analysis revealed five different sub-genres: diary, scrapbook, notice-board, essay and polemic. Each sub-genre is discussed in detail on the basis of a prototypical blog of the type in question.