We’ve created some bigger categories for this autoethnography and this has involved creating clusters of tags from our existing coding of Blogtrax postings. This is a leap forward. Since our last F2F, I’ve slightly reworded them. I expect they’ll change again. But currently they work like this.

1. Publishing the self which includes specific issues about performing online identities, our sensitivies as bloggers to impression formation and our decisions about what to post and what not to post. In considering the content of our blogs, we look at how postings can work on the boundaries between private and public life. We also include the affective dimension of blogging in this category (such as feelings of pride, embarrassment and so on) and their relationship to respect and reputation in blogging communities.

2. The nature of the text as an interlinked and constantly evolving work, that is fluid, visual and, at least in part, created by readers, other bloggers and the comments that are added. Here we consider the idea of the blog as a visual display (how do I look?) and develop the idea of blogs as a three-dimensional patchwork.

3. The fabric of the text is concerned with the tools used to construct meaning. Predominantly this is a about the use of written language to signify group membership, reference to shared understandings and humour. However, we are also keen to show how visual and audio modes are used – and in this case, in particular, the use of photographic images. Here we include the use of add-ons such as side-bar links, site meters and feeds. (Flickr albums?)

4. Social networks looks at how interactivity gives rise to the notion of blogging as a shared endeavour, a network than can lead to the development of a community of practice or an affinity space and how this relates to other platforms for online interaction (email, Flickr, MSN, shared blogs, others’ blogs) as well as to offline interaction.

So that’s the beginning of the middle, the middle of the beginning, or just another posting, depending on how you want to read it!