Blogtrax

Village mural
Originally uploaded by edsghm.

The tyranny of the positivist research paradigm sometimes makes you doubt the wisdom of your own actions. In drafting up a proposal for this work, you’re suddenly faced with a section called results. Well, it’s funny that, because here the results seem to be apparent from day one. In a sense the results are just the daily labour of reflection! Or are they? Should there be some sense of progress, some sifting or settling of ideas. Probably. Traditional ethnographies are quite linear…extensive data collection, thick description, analysis, draft, product etc. Here, the linearity is superimposed by the research culture we’re working in, but the study itself seems to flow differently, even at times to be recursive and, in a sense, some of the data was published before we began (!). So, I’m pondering on linearity and what that means for research, and also how that must force us to premature closure. Premature closure would hold the danger of making temporary thoughts somehow final. Well, I suppose you’ve got to stop somewhere, but maybe it would be more of a breaking off, meanwhile the blogging life continues to mutate (or something like that).

One of the by-products of this autoethnography thing is that you become a bit focused on your own practice and intent. The blogosphere is full of interesting (and not so interesting) things. Where is Blogtrax on this continuum, I wonder? These thoughts were sparked off by my daughter who sent me this blog, which I guess resonates with something in her experience. It catalogues the problems of sharing a living space - but before you go there, remember to check the number of comments. I Hate My Flatmate is obviously a winner - a pretty impressive affinity space I’d say!

Continuing on the theme of approaching blogging by looking at not-blogging, some thoughts on not-bloggers - those who don’t blog (and this is completely anecdotal). Well, here’s a list:
1. Those who’ve never heard of it, thought you just made the word up etc. (There’s plenty of these.)
2. Those who’ve read about blogs, usually in print, but think it’s a geeky kind of thing, or a bit of a joke.
3. Those who know what blogs are…maybe they’ve visited…but feel it’s ‘all a bit technical for them’. (’I wouldn’t be able to’; ‘Would leave a comment if I knew how to’ etc)
4. Those who know what blogs are, sometimes read them, but don’t see the point of blogging themselves. (Don’t see themselves as bloggers.)
5. Those who quite like the idea, are too busy, or just never seem to get round to it.
These could all be informed by orientations to digital culture. 1-3 seem to be on the periphery, whereas 4, 5 and , of course, bloggers themselves, are engaged to a greater or lesser extent. To varying degrees, not-bloggers don’t see the point…and for bloggers the point is…?
Various. Increasingly I’m seeing it in terms of voice/performance, even creativity. To borrow from Sherry Turkle ‘Who am we’?

It’s interesting how some things get blogged and others don’t; how some people blog and others just don’t see the point. The not-blog concept explored… First, in the un-blogged universe, all those things in bloggers’ daily online/offline lives that are not blog-worthy (for me that’s things that get seen, done, read, visited that are not particularly interesting or thought-provoking); second, those things, places etc. that are too difficult to blog (no access, too dodgy, no camera); third, those ideas, concepts, and so on that are un-formed, messy and too difficult to express; fourth, those events, thoughts etc that are, in some way, seen as private. Well, of course, you could add to or change the list, but it seems to miss an over-arching blogger’s decision - an editorial decision - how much to blog.

My original intent as a blogger was to lean into Third Space, to find expression for ‘current pre-occupations’ which didn’t get voiced elsewhere (actually, I hoped at the point to remain anonymous, so it seemed more a matter of ‘getting it off my chest’ rather than being read by X or Y). But this meant surrendering to the form - keeping it fairly brief, coherent, readable and, yes, interesting - just in case someone important to me read it! Yet even then there was a boundary, a blog/not blog boundary.

An example: in the blogs I visit, there is little reference to the minutiae of everyday life. Where we go, what we do is usually only referenced in an oblique way. Here’s an enigmatic reference, a more explicit reference and an implied reference to places we went/ things we did in meatspace. Clearly, there’s so much silence, unblogged, not-blog stuff (and why not?). But it seems important to ask why some things ‘get in’ and others don’t. The concepts of audience and purpose could be helpful here. My intial intent (above) was quite purpose-driven - you could call this Third Space thinking/writing; but audience known/unknown has gradually become important too. Will I say something interesting, (clever!), entertain…will my readers like me…will they return?

There’s probably not enough space to even begin to open up the other dimension of not-blog, that is those, and there are plenty of them, who don’t blog or don’t see the point (or don’t know what a blog is). It might be worth some exploration, though. If we are to understand what it’s like to be a blogger, what this particular engagement with digital culture is like, feels like, and becomes then it must be set against the backcloth of not-blogging. What does it do that is different? What’s the attraction? What’s the point? (Or, alternatively, are they the wrong questions to be asking in the first place?)

I wonder why I am so locked into thinking about places? And images?
I think it is because a whole new vista has been opened up to literacy academics, because of the increased number of possiblilities for multimodal texts. This means we have had to wander even more into other disciplines.
But we are still looking at literacy. We may use Social geography, we may use visual and cultural studies, but we are still coming at things from a literacy perspective.
That’s all.

OK so I have not written here for a while but I have been thinking thinking thinking.

I am learning stuff that is about the meta business of blogging, but I am also learning lots of things as a blogger. That is, I am learning about the process of blogging at the same time as learning to be a blogger.

Here are some of the things I have learned:

1. I have started to develop technical web-based skills…
Such as using a Flickr account to store and organise pictures. Thus, in having a blog, I have also developed a need to use an additional space on the Internet and this in turn means I have to acquire new skills in order to use it well.
I know how to

• upload photos;
• put them on a blog;
• make them available publicly;
• or privately;
• organise my photos in sets ;
• label photos with catchy tags.

(Tags are listed on Google and so my photos are more likely to be visited by others when they are surfing.It is a skill to pick tags which are likely to attract others - e.g. place names; brand names; things that bloggers seem interested in (e.g. graffitti).)

I have quickly become excited by the idea of people seeing and commenting on photos I post.It is clear, btw, that Flickr understands the mentality of people who blog; they are supporting the obsession of leading people to your work via tags etc.

I have been very careful to label as ‘private’ any photos of people who have not agreed to be on my blog. This stops people being able to see the photos by just surfing - they need a password. So I am learning a bit about the complexity of ethics and also about finding an audience for my work.

2. I have learned little bits of HTML - especially when I wanted to make my site PINK.

3. I am developing a new way of writing. I am learning to structure small pieces of text. I tend to link back to ongoing themes across posts (e.g. text as place in January; Parkour / Pourquoi again n January through to Feb.) or there are even jokes across blogs . I m learning to use a range of multimodal ways of communicating.

4. Commenters are very important to the substantive feel of my blog . I reply often to comments.

5. In addition to comments on my blog I sometimes have e mail correspondance with readers of posts. This is backstage talk which highlights something about the public nature of the blog.

6. Yet there is also an intimate feel to the blog. I have a sense of who is reading now and the way in which my affinity space is developing, means I have a slightly more secure sense of voice. But this still feels precarious and flexible. I want my blog to work and feel anxious about it.

7. There are some blogs (Trois Tetes; Vedana; a lesser extent e-selves) which definitely are weaving themselves together and are working as a unit. The fact that the frst two of these are people who meet in meat space lends the whole thing an extra dimension. Why are they blogging at each other? People are reading each others blogs, responding and keeping in step. This linkage seems very important to the bloggers involved. And it has been very exciting that Anya and I are emailing each other (see 5 below.)

8. I have elaborate jokes which depend on knowledge of previous posts or require newcomers to read previous posts which I will link to in order to help.

9. When writing a post I feel like a journalist, sorting through evidence in cyberspace - sometimes looking for substantiating evidence or proof; sometimes for inspiration. But in terms of reporting on stuff from meatspace, I definitely go about my daily life looking for things to blog. I look at the world with a blogger’s eye - and that is the bit I find hard - bringing meat space in. It feels awkward, odd. It feels more authentic somehow to depend on the web.

10. I sometimes do not feel pleased with my post. I sometimes revise the clarity of my English. I sometimes do not know what to write but feel driven by the discipline of posting daily and this is an interesting thing that I have set this discipline. It is important to get things to sound right, to have a balance. To be economical with language - to make sure it is a proper piece of web text. It HAS to be multimodal to justify itself.

11. I feel I have to defend the activity. Frequently people say to me, (in meat space, and after I have explained to tem what a blog is) ‘How do you have the time to do THAT?’ and even ‘Lucky you, I would not have time to do that.’ This often feels like a value laden judgement of how I spend my time and I feel that people disapprove of this activity. I can justify it on two levels, one that it is part of my research, but secondly that it is about sharpening my mind and developing skills. However it gives me an insight into how young people feel, when they are attacked for spending a lot of time on the Internet. They must know they are learning a lot, but it is thoroughly devalued. Learning IS timeconsuming, but that does not mean one should not do it.

BLOG ON CHAPS!!!

This immersion in blog culture involves reading web stuff too. Production and consumption are intertwined. I’ve been reading onscreen for a number of years now, but lately my habits have been changing. For example, I have the list of blogs I read most often on my links. I’m checking these everyday (even if they’re slow or quiet). I also have some bookmarked blogs (and other sites) and look at these in a more casual way. I like linking through people’s blogs into other areas too. Sometimes I follow quite techie ones and get lost trying to get my head round feed-burning, why XML is good and so on. Then there’s other stuff (tags, trackbacks, wikis) that I grasp but don’t use. Of course, it’s not all like that. Sometimes you stumble on very everyday material or weird stuff. It’s a bit like being at a party…some people seem really interesting, some I think I like and others are just background noise. HA! new metaphor: blog as party, invite your friends, but be prepared for gatecrashers.

In December I put this in a paper ‘Identity is no longer so closely linked to place or territory, delineated by nationhood, nor simply as psychology suggests, through acts of identification, but instead produced through action and performance.’ It was a way of supporting the concept of ‘identity performance’. I didn’t have the space to go on and discuss how performance implies audience…and audience, in turn, suggests interaction and response. Reflecting again on this makes me think about the complexity of silent readers and regular commmentators on blogs. On the blog, identity is ‘produced and consumed in a form abstracted from actual presence’ (although we may from time to time show our faces) BUT ‘Mostly overlooked by users, the production of the message is only the first part of the process: whether by a reply message or by tracking a virtual footprint of a visitor one’s website, one can only know if one has been acknowledged through some sort of response.’ Markham 2004:2. Now I don’t track footprints, don’t get many blog comments (although I know in other ways what my audience thinks) yet somehow, the other day, I formed the impression that my blog was drab, in need of a makeover, loosing energy. I wonder why?