In trying to interrogate the concept of affinity space(s) in the activity of blogging, I’m wondering how helpful an understanding of play and social networking might be. Are the blogs and bloggers we feature most part of an existing or emergent social network that already exists, but is somehow extended and propelled in the blogosphere? And is that space more like a playspace than an affinity space?

Play is pointless in the sense that it very rarely has a primary purpose which exists outside of itself. It is essentially non-functional, although of course, various rhetorics of play do import notions of extrinsic worth (development, therapy, learning etc). Affinity spaces, according to Gee, seem to be much more guided by purpose.

what people have an affinity with (or for) is not first and foremost the other people using the space, but the endeavour or interest around which the space is organised

So, blogs could, of course be affinity spaces, but the ones we talk about do not easily constellate around a clear ‘endeavour’ or ‘interest’. Perhaps setting play and affinity in opposition will not stand up to scrutiny, but, thinking for a moment about meeting at BGC, there were times in which we inhabited a fairly unbounded (in a sense, pointless) playspace: eg at Zoots; and other times in which we entered an affinity space (more or less purposeful) to get something done. There is of course leakage, but nevertheless some sort of distinction here.

The emergence of affinity seems to happen when we begin to migrate from simply hanging out or making everyday meanings into the activities of categorisation, reflection or knowledge exchange. In tagging what we’ve said or what we’ve seen, we begin to move out of our own space, imagining, at least, a social world. A tag cluster signals the possibility of a group and shared interest. Or at Zoots we slide into a conversation about resizing photographs or the role of comments. [In this way we drag our blogs into meatspace like identity appendages.] And Blogtrax, too, and the whole enterprise of researching blogging, drags the activity out of play space into an affinity space.