Blogtrax

OK the info for this post actually is lifted straight from the comments from this morning’s post. But it is all so interesting I want it out on the front level (so to speak) with a chance for me to reflect on it a bit..
There has been a bit of a row Anya told me and Torill gave me the headsup here
Apparently people have been saying that to have a blog roll means that it delimits the blogs that are read; it prioritises the work of a smaller community and means that people are not so experimental in their reading. This narrows the blogosphere and makes a few people more powerful. Others have argued that blogrolls are useful as references for they allow you to explore avenues of like minded individuals and in fact spread the word rather than limit. You can trace bits of the debate here.

And of course, ironically some of these sites have excellent blogrolls.

However I don’t want to think about this within that kind of parameter; I have written elsewhere about the way links work to define communities; to lend coherence; to foster a sense of belonging and to show where more can be learned. I have also thought a lot about how such links (and other things) support the accumulation of social capital and that sites are often structured to do so. I think it is probably always going to be the case that somehow all activity online will be situated within some kind of power construct .. (am I becoming a Marxist after all?)
Funnily enough, witnessing this grown up row amongst veteran bloggers (after all I am only a newbie) made me feel like I was standing outside the kitchen door while Mum and Dad were arguing on the other side. There is a whole old social history behind all that lot and I have not been part of it. They all knew each other while I was scratching out my name on parchment. Bitch PhD referrred to big bloggers (!) at one point which I think rightly recognises the status (right word?) pervasiveness (?) of some blogs in the academic community of which hers is no doubt one. (Hey, but who exactly is she? Does ANYONE know?)

Anyway it is all fascinating and I am grateful to Anya and Torill for letting me in on all this.

And hey Guy!! If you ever read this … the great Torill Mortensen left a comment on our blog. We are on the map my chicken!!

I discussed Bourdieu’s Forms of Capital with Jackie and Anne-Marie.
I am thinking about a model for online learning communities which takes appropriate bits from Communities of Practice and Affinity Spaces but which also includes the dimension of power dynamics.
Bourdieu talks about social alliances like this: ‘Each member of the group is thus instituted as a custodian of the limits of the group: because the definition of the criteria of entry is at stake in each new entry, he can modify the group by modifying the limits of legitimate exchange through some form of misalliance.’ which is highly resonant of Flickr groups, in the way people set up new themes but these then develop and there is some kind of negotiation going on through the comments system, which reflect what things are valued and what are not. I believe that certain discourses become highly valued on Flickr; for examle the discourses of gratitude, of appreciation etc. People praise each other’s work, their houses, their babies, their belongings even. On Star not Star this is exemplified very well here, where the photographer tells so much of her life in describing the ciircumstances by which she took the photo. She reveals lots about her family life, her lack of expertise, here gratitude for praise and also for receiving useful critique to help her understand something about her photo she had taken. The way she received the comments from others seemed to facilitate more teeming in. I have seen this elsewhere on the site. This is all about being a member of the group who can use the right discourses. This does not have to be calculated at all, I am not suggesting that . I am saying that some discourses are very powerful and that people who are popular in the groups are able to interact in these ways.

Another interesting group is Pirates. TT set up a Pirates group where he intended to invite pictures not of literal pirates but of transgressive people in urban settings- a kind of intellectual pirate, a pirate who challenges social norms. The group is now filled with loads of pictures of real pirates; TT was not actually in control of what pictures went on. The power is illusory sometimes. This does not mean that social capital has not been acquired where it is apparent, for I think in these spaces where the right discourses are used, (discourses of gratitude of admiration, etc) powere is sustained. I.e. power is embedded in the discourses and the modes of the space. So ther is power also in images and people’s critique of what makes a good picture helps to shape what is valued in the shared images!!

Anyway there is lots there; I want to describe the way Flickr uses the space of the web to help me make a stab at describing an online community which draws on the notion of affinities, of learning, of valuing different types of knowledge, etc etc but which also acknowledges those elements of power which are undermined by other models. Gee talks about leadership in affinity spaces being ‘porous’; I certainly feel that there is more opportunity for leadership in online groups, (and that is probably part of the attraction - to feel empowered in a safe (ish) space) ; but I also think groups are subject to hierarchies. We cannot forget for example, that it is Yahoo that supports a system of ‘favourites’ which help confer status. Or that the system of picking people as contacts is seen as acquisitive in some way; the discourses of mutuality are perhaps a little bit misleading over in the Flickr camp.
If I can try to draw up a model for Flickr I can then think about testing it in other groups.

I am feeling quite excited about all this. Multi modal forms of capital, yeah.