Blogtrax

It’s interesting how robust social networks seem to be layered across different communicative spaces. So when I checked my Flickr contacts I saw a new picture from Anya titled Gus. I wondered whether it was Gus Andrews we met in Miami. I clicked the photo and decided it didn’t quite look right and she couldn’t be in Sydney anyway. A couple of days after Anya posted something on my blog (and told me she ‘owed’ me an email). So later I thought I’d better check Anya’s blog and there ’surprise-surprise’ is her account of meeting up with THE Gus in Sydney.

Dr J is local of course, but what’s interesting is our face2face conversations regularly make reference to goings-on in the blogospere and the Flickrverse…and the other way around too. So I have a picture of Emma on my blog and, of course, also on my photostream and it’s there that Dr J left a comment about the knitwear I was sporting last time we met in meatspace. Well since I’m going for the Gerv Phinn Knitwear Prize, I was most flattered! But the point is the conversations (and networks) carry on across media and online platforms - they create a sort of unity, even though we perform identity in subtley different ways in these contexts.

In an unprecedented outburst yesterday on DrJoolz I ranted about an article on how a mother, whilst praising the new blog craze for teens, also talked about the need to write contracts for her children to sign.

(Mental Note: Must not use blog to rant as this can be very offensive to others. Have learned valuable blogging lesson.)

Writing about that has since prompted me to think much more carefully about my view of The Internet generally and my view of blogging specifically.

Whilst I was under the impression that I was being a good little academic and aware of my positionality in relation to my work, I realise now how my experiences of the Internet are ofa very specific type- and so are those of my family .

I had not thought before about how our cultural capital extends to our online identities and that this has protected my family and I from unpleasant Internet exeriences. And how we do not ‘go’ to places that are the Internet equivalent of scarey alleyways - just cos we are not curious in such directions …

I was thinking about how I do not, (unlike many people I know) receive porn in the form of e mail spam (How have I escaped?) . I was also thinking about how I have only ever seen online pornography once. This was a pasted series of images in a comment on Justin Hall’s blog in response to his infamous crying episode. That was a link I picked up through Guy.

In fact Guy was upset about this as he felt he had inadvertently put porn on HIS blog, because he had linked to it. He felt he was tainted by association.

And our blogs’ fabrics are constituted of our links as well as our words and pictures (etc). Other people’s texts become part of ours, because we weave them in. And when we do that, we have to be careful that we do not misrepresent other people’s views (as I did yesterday), especially as we can potentially lead new readers to read the source in a way the original author did not intend - so therefore Will and Anya defended themselves in comments on my blog. (This is a great use of blog comments, to come back and say something in one’s defence.) All these affinities can be very positive and lead in the end to greater understandings as we visit and talk with each other. But my point here, is about how our blogs are continuous texts with each other; our links tie us together and are mutually constitutive (if I can say that?) . So in building texts we constantly re-affirm and regenerate what the group is. We are our associations. And that is why it is important the associations start off OK.

But look. Guy is an academic; Anya is an academic. Will is an academic. We have found each other through common interests through a series of links, through degrees of separataion. We have traced paths via each other and kept within a group with some pretty high status cultural capital. No wonder we love the web; we talk to people ‘like us’ and we go through the links on many people’s blogs in this way. Our network is safe.

Ok, back to the point. Many rightly worry that their kids’ blogs (etc.) will become tainted through association with others’.

An example: A hairdresser comes every now and then to our house to cut my daughters’ hair. Earlier this week she was talking about trying to keep her son off the net because of all the filthy pictures his friends send him via MSN. She said ‘they talk dirty’ and are nasty to each other. My daughter and I were amazed. ‘Why doesn’t he block them?’ she said. Our hairdresser explained that these were his ’so-called friends’ who he did not want to block.

Now all my daughter’s friends are ones she has met online; some of them come from a core group connected to a message board run by a charity for kids with ME. The others have come via recommendations from friends through this. So somehow they have come through a vetting system. Cultural capital of a sort. (On the other hand maybe my daughter has missed out on this essential adolescent bickering… is it important to go through? Maybe.)

In my little family I think we have kept to paths without realising. Bauman has written about how people trace paths through cities and experience cities differently from each other - and would describe the city very differently from each other.

This is what the Internet is like and I think I have taken this long to realise. So the lesson is, ‘be more patient with those who are nervous. ‘ They clearly have reasons, since they may have traced through paths which lead to areas where I never go or maybe they have only heard of these scarey areas and they might not know there are many safe places to go on the Net. I think I need to respect this a bit more and to be more aware of my priveleged position.

I have written about how our lives off line are blended with our online selves but had not thought about this in terms of cultural capital before. Our identities online remain tied to our offline selves in more ways than we know.

I have found the DrJoolz site a lot easier to keep up with lately. (Easier to write than this site at least.) I have enjoyed just putting bits and bobs of interest on there; I have realised that as time has gone on I have been writing much more for a particular group of people who I know are reading. More and more people have TOLD me they are reading and it is this group who I think about as I write.
I wondered whether this was somehow ‘wrong’ to write for a particular group - especially a group so small, intimate even - and not really in the spirit of ‘real’ blogging. Yes I feel there is a right way to do it (!) and it is one which should assume no particular people / readers and just kind of ‘put out there’ in a sort of, I don’t know,
‘noble’?, ’self interested’?, ’self-absorbed’?, ‘intellectually pure’? way, a wholeload of things that demonstrate my mind as being purely consistent and only interested in one thing. That consistent thing would just be the theme of the blog; one thing that is pursued, that is very important, significant meaningful and deep. (Yes I know other blogs are like mine, but I feel that as an academic, there should be this worthy stuff being put out on a daily basis - preferably with some political earnestness there too.)

After I went to the UKLA conference though, I wrote a lot about it (here, here and here for example) and I realise now that I was pretty much writing to explain to Anya, as I am always grateful to her for sharing her conferences online, so I put down what I thought she might be interested in.

But I also wrote for others who HAD attended the conference; I wanted to share my view and get feedback on theirs. I knew that everyone would still be thinking about it and may want to continue to interact on the same theme. And indeed this is what happened. I got quite a lot of comments and someone even sent me a link to one of the films shown by a keynote speaker - Mizuko Ito. So why blog it? Why is this the chosen mode?
I think that one of the reasons is that people can look at any time to see what I think. It is a way of communicating to many. I can use all the affordances of the wb - not just language.

I guess I like to get the reaction of many. It is also, of course, a pretty exhibitionist activity, to blog; to hold court and then wait to see what other people will say and do as a result. In some ways it is like writing a letter, the same letter to a lot of people. Except with a blog it is a public writing; like reading out on stage or ike a town crier shouting out at people whether they want to know or not! (Although they can always ignore me online.) In other ways, I feel like the whole thing is a bit like one of those inane chat shows. I don’t like chat shows really as they are so bizarre; a group of people talking to each other,witnessed by many - a live audience in the studio, and then anther audience which watches an edited version a lot later. A blogger seems to assume someone wants to listen to her - how vain. And a blogger’s audience is also a bit multilayered; consisting of people who know her in real life and read her blog; peole who know her as a blogger only but read her posts regularly; people who might read her work (published academic stuff) and find out about her blog; then there are those whohappen across the blog once and never read again; there are those who come across it and gradually visit more and more (etc.) These readers may or may not leave comments. And so there is this thing of layers, of degrees of involvement. So it is all more compicated than being just one type of person sharing an affinity space. Some are casual, some are keen , some - wel, here and there. ( Icould maybe do a diagram here - (;-0)

It has always seemed really pretentious to me, this strange thing of chat shows where they pretending they are in a lounge at home or something, and refer to interviewees as ‘guests’ (they are paid after all) - (sofas; drinks; flowers on the table; some ‘guests’ even bring presents) - Yes, I think the blog has a lot in common with that; this sort of pretense at exclusive views on the ‘real’ thoughts and so on of a guest; and it is presented as if to a group of friends - even though it goes totally public, is not exclusive etc etc. Except that people do sometimes choose to reveal a lot of their ‘private lives’ both on chat shows and on their blogs. In this way that ‘private/public’ thing is shared by blogs and by chat shows.

Another characteristic of how I write on my blog, is that although I write with a group of people in mind, I am always hoping for more like minded people to listen - and join in. Thus the use of links for people to follow up on previous conversations, allows them to ‘catch up’. Many links will not be read by -regulars’ as they refer to old stuff. In this way it is like explaining a family joke, or a bit of social history to a new member of the group. And this of course brings us yet again, back even closer to a ned to refine ‘Affinity Spaces’ as a concept. The drive to involve more people, comes from my constant desire to interact with others; to be social; to find more like me; so I can learn from them, with them, find out stuff. Anything. I love to follow their links; I love to have a reaction from others. I like to see them

’show and tell’

too. - as Guy would have it. (When is he back btw??)

Sarah had a link to this blog, which is one of a type - a travel blog. Profgirrl also described her japan visit recently and also blogged whileshe was away, giving us news. Anya also kept in touch when she was at a conference, as did Guy.

The bloggers give us a sense of their new experiences in relation to the space they are in, even though in fact they report to us from within the same cyberspace. As far as we are concerned, they could be anywhere - they are not in our space at any rate. yet we still get a sense of their changed location through their blogs. So much blogging is like journalism and this is one of those similarities - people bringing news from all over the world.

Sarah also linked to this blog which gives a really interesting description of how educators could use Flickr.

But check out THIS as well - a piece of software using communities of practice theory to generate learning on the web.Moodle calls itself a ‘learning management system’ and could be a money making thing that I don’t much like. Band and Wagon come to mind..
I likethe Flickr idea alongwith mobile phones and tagging though. Would suit adult learners in particular I think. I also liked this educational project, (using Flat Stanley ) which I saw sometime ago and wrote about on DrJoolz .

I have just discovered that you can do a search, using Google, to find posts on Blogger blogs. I suppose everyone else knew this AGES ago, but I have only just found out. Look here.

By typing ‘Flickr’ in the Google box when on DrJooz, it threw me all the posts where I mention Flickr. Cool.

Finally while we are on the topic of Flickr, thanks to Anya for telling about the ComicLife tags on Flickr and giving us another educational use of Flickr. Another example of people learning together about visuals, multi modalities and this time also, narrative.Fantastic stuff. Am going to HAVE to get the software from Apple. See these other examples.

Have not posted here in a while. I go for a while with lots of thoughts about process and then .. NUFFINK.

But I think it is interesting that I have found quite a few blogs recently that I really like and that they are all doing different things.

There is the Riverbend blog which is doing something Very Important in documenting social and political history in Iraq for us. It is keenly, a woman’s view, a young woman’s view and clear in its declaration of partiality of point of view.

Then there is this one, Postsecret, which is very unusual, and puts up the points of view of others. And in so doing, shows us something of the Blog Keeper, who is like a keepr of secrets, as well as a declarer ofs ecrets. S/he is like a ventriloquist, speaking the words of others. By gathering them into one place though, s/he is like a curator; putting the artefacts in a glass cabinet, as Kate would say. This blog totally invests in the Public/Private affordances of the Internet. A very clever idea which plays with the word ‘Secret’ in a post modern way; the pun in post referring to: Postcard; posting on the blog; post meaning ‘after’, as in ‘not any more’; and toying with postmodernism. An intellectual game. What if the secrets are not true? Does not matter of course, since the site is about intrigue; it is about wondering about truth; it is about uncertainties. I like it a lot in its ideas but also as it has lts of VISUALS.

And then there is the lovely, but unkempt woman, Vitriola Webb’s ite. She lives in Portugal with her family but is from the UK. Her blog is one that like many I enjoy, in that it comes across as very gendered, very feisty, very full of life and social commentary. She puts her life on the line for us and takes big risks. She talks about her kids and ‘does identity’ very strongly through what she tells us about handling incidents in the big wide world with her kids. She defies that miserable mumsy image. And her blog is full of visuals that excite me. They excite me as they are drawings; they do not rely on digital cameras and they have a very high impact because of the way they invest strongly in naievete of shape and colour. But itis false naivete; for while the shapes and colours are simple, they are keen clever images which work so well with her words. Econmic and clever with phrasing she is. This is a real fave for me.

Then there is the wonderful parodying site Big Blogger 2005. Actually a clever idea, to bring together a variety of Bloggerswh are authors of one blog and we get to interact because we can vote one blogger out of the cyber house, per week. The blog, apart from the clever joke, does not work for me all that well. It shows me how important it is that a blog has to have a clear character of its own in order to really work.

Then there is the thing about Frankenstein. I don’t like it at all. I don’t like the book or the film much anyway but I am not sure I see the artistic merit in turning a book into a blog … it loses its structure which actually is important to the book having its impact.

All these blogs are very different from each other but are all using the form really interestingly.

And I have not mentioned Bitch PhD, Profgirrrl or i-Anya. They are all blogging academics who to various degrees reflect on personal and academiv aspects of their lives and are again very clear in communicating gendered identities. And for me that is part of a very strong allure as I think women are MARVELLOUS.

I am not sure about this next point, but I’l put it anyway as this is a blog for my musings and and not a fully considered paper.. but I think that Torill’s blog,Jill Walker’s and Sarah’s tend to concentrate very hard on gathering together links and references for others to use. They tend not to put the personal in so much … this is less true about Sarah, (who has recently blogged about moving appartments) I think they all tend to keep to the academic point more and that they use their blogs as places to keep interesting stuff and show stuff to people rather than showing themselves as much. Not sure though. I guess it is all a question of degree, of relativity. This blog is more like that, while DrJoolz is more gendered, more self revelatory and tied into My Life.

Anyway this allneeds some more careful thinking and I reckon I will draw up a little taxonomy at some point but being more careful and picking out features in a systenmatic way .. sorry to anyone who does not like what I am thinking so far … but do let me know your views.

Anya left a comment on my post here. explaining how disappointed she was that a colleague who writes about Reality TV nevccer actually watches it and made her feel small for doing so.

It links a little with the thing I mentioned in my last Blogtrax post, about the way academics usually have a blurring of the boundaries between their academic and their ‘other’ lives; that it is sometimes diificult for them to think about where the boundaries actually are.

For the academic that Anya was talking about , there is however a clear distinction between what he is prepared to write about and what he values in his life generally. His attitude is very different to mine and it has revealed to me an assumption that Ihave, which is that researchers see the intrinsic worth in what they are researching. This is clearly not bon out by Anyaa’s observations ofher colleague and it is clear she had a similar assumption as me - hence her disappointment.

Academics who blog as part of their research are probably showing they value that activity; it feels more respectful to me to value the integrity and worth of what you are focussing on in your study. But I guess that is a feature of an ethnographic approach and not necessarily of other approaches where there is a determination to be objective, detached and to soberly assess a situation from the outside.

Motivation, for me is to become more deeply involved in something I like and think is valuable; but I guess others are motivated by a determination to improve society, to change what they are studying. (And I guess I am a bit more like that in other projects I am involved in. )

1.Originally, I started keeping a blog to see what it would be like to write something that would appear online. Having written about others and their online interactions, I wanted to know if I was right in some of my assumptions. I admired what I was looking at and wanted to do it too.
2. I find writing helps me to think through some of my ideas and I like the discipline of writing regualarly - however busy my day is with other things… I try to force myself to write daily.
3. I like the hybrid nature of the writing - it is part work and part play. As Anya said, something about boundary shifting. I think it is true that the boundaries of work/play merge for most academics and their inability to to distinguish is reflected in the blogs of many academics I think. Thanks to Anya for this insight.
4. I like the public/private tension of the space.
5. Writing helps me develop my ideas and I write them in my blog in a semi formed state; not ready for peer review as such, but open for peer commentary.
5. I like being part of an affinity space. This space is slightly uncertain as it is transitory to a degree and I am not quite sure where its boundaries are.
6. I like taking things from my meatspace experiences and rearranging them in cyberspace to look at as new text, s a narrative of sorts. These reconstructions come in the the form of digital images I take with my camera; words on the web-page that narrate aspects of my life; hyperlinks to show places I have been, things I have read, etc.
7. I like being part of digital culture network; I like the interaction.
8. I like producing texts that have hyperlinks and that have a range of modalities; it seems important as a cultural develoment and I want to be part of it.
9. I think this is a new form of writing and I want to research it.
10. I can communicate with people I know and people I do not know; I like not quite being sure who is reading.

Apologies that this post repeats a lot of what has gone before … but that is the nature of developing ideas and learning… it is circuitous.

Anya contacted me by e mail to talk about the nervousness post I wrote earlier today.
She and I have both mentioned in articles about backstage chat, about advising others in a space away from the public gaze but still online.
It is like meeting down the pub and talking after work; still colleagues but with understandings that are more friendly than that.
I am beginning to feel I know Anya pretty well; certainly better than some of my meatspace colleagues. (And yet I will not feel I really know her till I see her, I don’t think.)
Whilst there is the tension between public/private within the confines of the blog, there is not the feeling of public on an e mail.

I thought that this was really interesting.
It is Anya thinking about what she likes about blogs and it is a little bit of a different list to the one she has put more recently in her newer blog. Just a little sign about developing interests and how we use the web differently to suit different preoccupations in our lives.
I did a similar post here which Kate’s comments added to.

I love the way Anya’s new blog allows her to categorise and file things so that you can check out thins thematically as well as datewise.
We need to do that with this blog and I will investigate.

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!!!