Blogtrax

I’ve noticed a number of academic contacts slowing-up on their posting frequency and I don’t think it’s just a seasonal thing. Maybe we’ve passed the first flush of blogging - saying this, I’m really thinking about a fairly limited group of academic bloggers in the UK . Elsewhere in the blogosphere, people come and go, change service and so on. That seems like a natural rhythm.

Although posting is sometimes a bit of a chore, it’s become a real habit for me and there’s no shortage of stuff to put up there. So I can’t really see slowing-up myself at this point in time. Recently, my posting has been much more focused on digital literacy and from time to time I’ve found myself commenting on education which is a bit of a new departure for me.

I have my blog set as my home page, and therefore tend to look at it regularly. I use the sidebar links a lot, particularly while I’m working. So it’s identity performance, regular updating and a handy bookmark all at the same time. I do most of my blog reading at home. My patterns vary a bit, but I check my favourite blogs every couple of days, others every week or so. At the moment I’m not using any feeds, because Snap gives me a quick page view which does just as well.

Usually when I’m writing (and reading more) there are more links to papers and stuff. Other times the posts are like observations, proto-thoughts or field notes. Currently blogging is quite a quick process - maybe 10 mins or so, but every so often I have the need (or interest) to build up my photo-stock on Flickr….so that can add to the length of time involved.

I don’t spend a lot of time tinkering with the look of my blog, although I do wish it looked a bit less busy (like the Critical Literacies one). The last thing I did was add Snap - then before that I just wasted about half an hour one night working out how to put a space in between my photo and the blog title (how sad is that?). The other thing I do on a regular basis, as it happens, is update my reading/listening bit through 43 things. That’s very personal - I love doing that - but I don’t thing anyone else cares at all. No-one’s ever commented on that on the blog or face2face!!

Well it’s a good while since I blogged here, and given the avowed intention of keeping Blogtrax alive as a log of an ungoing autoethnography it does seem to be limping along and that’s largely a matter of time - having the time to keep up a reflective blog whilst posting on my personal blog, shared blogs, student blogs and, of course, reading favourites and new ones gobbles up the time. Put that together with life (and explorations of new social networking sites) it all adds up to a convincing excuse.

My personal blog is now 3 years old - that seems significant in itself - and I’ve been wanting to reflect on that for a week or so. In 3 years I have just over 500 posts - that works out at roughly one every other day on average, but given that I was away 3 months and often stop when I’m abroad, my ‘normal’ frequency is higher than that. OK so that’s a bit boring, but one thing that it shows is that its a pretty regular part of what I do - part of my life. Mostly, I just like doing it and enjoy the exercise of thinking about something that’s interesting and then writing it up. I like watching it grow as an unbounded, cumulative text.

It’s hard to tell how my posts change over time, but it seems they’re nearly all to do with technology, writing and teaching and how these things intersect with my personal and professional life. I think I tend to add in local colour about what I’m up to, what my family’s doing and then add the occasional comment about current affairs - but these provide background detail. I use my sidebar to show reading and music, but my comments on these are minimal. My sidebar is a mess, but it’s one of the most useful bits for me. Since my blog is set as my homepage, it’s got some of the most important links for me.

I’m interested in how I use my blog for different purposes. A common one is when people email about research stuff (eg I read so and so, is there any more?). It’s dead easy just to say, check the links on my blog…but also when friends or students hear about Ruth’s singing - I can’t remember any details, but I can say ‘Look for Ruth on the sidebar.’ I’m sure there’s much more like this but these examples really blow a whole in that idea that a blog is an online journal. I mean who’s journal has that kind of functionality?

Most of the time I love my blog. I like its distinctive, quirky look and I like it when people unexpectedly stumble on it. It’s good the way people pick up on different things ‘Oh I saw my picture!’ or ‘I liked the bit you wrote about’, ‘I don’t get it’ or ‘I liked that picture of the steam engine.’ - whatever. Sometimes I’ve got too much to say and these days I just try to keep it to a paragraph; sometimes what I’ve got is a collection of completely unrelated things; sometimes I can’t think of anything to write. Sometimes I hate my blog. I hate it most when I don’t feel I have anything to say, when I’m tired but still in the trall of that blog addiction.

But when I look back at my posts (with the possible exception of the very early ones which I thought were secret) I feel good about them. If there’s humour I don’t really care if no-one else laughs. If there’s insight, I don’t care if there are no comments. Sometimes I get the feeling that some readers might find what I’ve written pretentious but I don’t care because that’s what was on my mind. I often read the whole screen of my blog, and I nearly always think ‘Yes….good’. I hardly ever regret posting something.

Last, and really a rather funny thing that’s worthy of comment is my fear of transferring to the new blogger format. Funny because I’ve been raving for ages about getting category tags on Blogger…and now they’re here…BUT that means transferring my blog with the possibility that some of the add-ons and its particular look may shift. Will I be old-skool for ever? Probably not, but I’ve recognised that I may need time when I make that leap and so far I haven’t had it!

(Not really a postscript but another bit after ‘last’). In my teaching I’ve been looking at the blog as a reflective tool…now I’m beginning to see that everywhere. Of course you couldn’t say that it’s part of the blog architecture, blogging is no more or less reflective than any other kind of writing but composing your thoughts for your ideal reader is certainly a common blog genre - long may it thrive!

I’m fascinated by the fluidity of the blogosphere. As texts blogs often appear to be unbounded - they change their look, their relationships, their links, paying little respect to any notions of fixity. Over a relatively short period of time we have re-skinned our blogs - Dr Joolz has changed provider - and we have changed the tools, processes and styles in which we blog. This fluid world is also characterised by frequent changes in reference points as the blogosphere reshapes itself. Our audience re-groups, we change our relationships to each other and we re-calibrate our frequency of commenting. Topics refresh and morph into new areas and some of our frequently-posting friends have for one reason or another become occasionals (Mary Plain and Simply Clare are cases in point). New bloggers have appeared and disappeared, and new kinds of possibilities have emerged. Some, like Kate, experiment with new forms… Professionally, apart from this shared metablog, we are both involved in Lets Get Digital and Critical Literacies - group blogs which aim to provide a forum for research and academic ideas - both difficult to promote and sustain. Is it, perhaps, that the real social affordance of the blog is about a performance of identity something that is harder for a group to achieve? Looking at the social architecture of blogging as opposed to photosharing, im or message boards one gets the sense of the personalised page - my space (isn’t the popular MySpace appropriately named, from this perspective?), an online shopwindow, a showcase, decorated like mine with my books, my CDs, my pics and so on. And I do, from time to time expend a little energy in arranging this window…yes, it’s interactive, yes, it is intertextual, hyperlinked and so on, but the starting point is me. The social architecture of other online spaces is rather different, and for me less personal. Commenting on someone else’s blog though is much the same experience as dropping a comment on a Runboard discussion group, or chatting on someone else’s photostream.

Recently, because of a project I’m involved in, I’ve been interacting with people in a virtual world. In a sense this feels much more like neutral territory - the social architecture is different, the interaction is far more conversational. Apart from the world itself, which gives the impression of fixity, the communication is far more ephemeral. Once I’m used to the subtleties of turn-taking (and waiting) in synchronous chat there’s an interesting freeflow of chat. Last night I met Andrew, who I know on RL and we talked about approaches to narrative writing in a virtual park - he was a spider, I was a dalek. I’ve also spoken to Susan in Michigan (who’s she in RL?) about building terraced houses, Zola and Rich in Finland (seen his pic on a website). Next time I visit that world is back to normal. I haven’t left a trace of myself there. My text has evaporated, my words erased. So this suggests a continuum - yes the blog rolls over (but it’s still archived); yes the blog topics change (but the old ones are still there). There is a leading edge to a blog. It’s right there where you just left it. It has a life beyond your posting, as does Flickr or a Runboard discussion and the archived memory is a key feature. Chat in whatever format is very different in texture.

I think I half-promised to do something around social software, and since that’s more than likely to be the organising feature of the up-coming book, it could do with some attention. JG was of the opinion that the label ’social software’ was unhelpful, because many forms of software have a communicative (social) function, and may be used by particular bounded groups and also as work, or at the very least task-orientated affinity spaces. I think I’ve got that right, and it’s a good point to make, because drawing up a boundary may exclude all sorts of interesting stuff and depending on your point of view, that ‘other’ stuff becomes less interesting. Alternatively of course those vibrant and hugely popular tools and communities could simply be dismissed as only being social, being less in some way or another.

In the discourse around online communities the term ’social software’ is of course regularly used (not that that alone invalidates JG’s point), but I was using it in that accepted sense, assuming that people knew what I was on about. I ended up suggesting that it was something to do with community, participation, and low content software - in hindsight I could have said transparent. Transparent because there could not really be a blog at all until someone posted on it.

So I suppose the point of social software is to create a space for participation, for the development of community and that is its sole raison d’etre (irrespective of its particular software history). Isn’t this the essence of the killer MySpace - that has become so hugely popular. If MySpace is about anything, it’s about what people put on MySpace and how their individual stuff inter-relates. From Wikipedia, I got the singularly unhelpful line posing as a definition, suggesting that social software is

the use of two or more modes of computer-mediated communication that result in community formation.

At least that emphasises the importance of communication. Here, though, there’s plenty of ongoing discussion of social software. So much that you can almost abstract what it is from the examples given. On the linked page, for example, one discovers the list meme and that really does seem to pin it down through exemplification. So here goes:

I’m kicking off an informal poll: what are your top five favorite social software services currently in use? I’ll start:

1. (drumroll, please)… Flickr. Shocking, I know.
2. del.icio.us
3. My Web 2.0 — I tend to store everything in My Web 2.0 and only a subset of things to del.icio.us, but I use both frequently to find cool stuff.
4. Memeorandum — when I need news fast, which is all the time, this is what I use.
5. YouTube is emerging as a new favorite. I like that I can so easily embed video on my own blogs.

I got excited on Friday. I’d spent an hour or so working on a book review and had just run out of energy. I took a break, had some tea and surfed a bit. Playfully looking around, I came across a programme someone had written. It generated letters a numbers from other people’s Flickr images. I wrote my name, quickly grabbed the accompanying html and pasted it into my blog with a ‘wow look what I’ve found’ or words rather like that. Along comes Mary Plain with a ‘Pray tell’ sort of comment. And then, of course later I spruced up the original post with some reflections (yawn) and the link…the link itself which Mary Plain (being a cool hunter) really wanted. That then set me thinking about links.

1. We can be quite dictatorial in our links. I’ve done it. I’ve seen others do it. No real comment- just look HERE they say. Or HERE, HERE and HERE. This is cool. This sort of link tries to drag the reader away…but does it? Probably not.

2. There’s the hyper-referencing link. So and so (linked) argues that, blah, blah, blah, blah but I think blah, blah. There’s an option here you can read the original or pass on. The writer gives you that choice (a bit like academic referencing it points you to the source).

3. Then there’s the name- check link that takes you to the person’s homepage, blog or photo. This sort of link just adds local colour.

4. Hybrids of the latter- place, company or self-referencing (also adding local colour, providing free advertising).

5. Affiliation-linking sometimes includes 3 and 4, but really strives to demonstrate allegiances, networks and so on. Affiliation linking shouts out THIS IS WHO I AM; THIS IS WHO I KNOW; THIS IS THE KIND OF PERSON I WANT YOU TO THINK I AM.

6. Source-linking. Well I think that’s what Mary Plain was after. I want to play this too, but can you tell me where to find it.

One of the things about blogging as hyperwriting is that it gets you to understand more about how linking works. And this has a knock on effect when you start reading and following/not following other people’s links. I think you get more discerning. Either that or you slip into bad habits. Some places I go and don’t really bother reading - just follow their links. Other places, what the person writes is usually far more worthwhile than following the links.

Hyperwriting is about making choices. Deciding when to link and when not to link. I know I’m very unsystematic. On some occasions I find I’ve found a lot of cool stuff during the day and I end up stitching my blog together around the links. The links end up being more important (to me as the writer). Other times I’ve got something I want to say. Maybe it doesn’t really need links, so it’ll depend upon whether I’m busy or not. On such occasions I might add a few links to pep it up, to add another layer of meanings or just for fun. If I’m pushed, tired or stressed I’ll probably think ‘Ah what the hell who needs links anyway.’ Now funnily enough that must be hyperwriting too. Deciding not to include links.

I had an experiment in mind, but it may take some time planning (sounds like hard work already). That’s to make a text that has a very thin slice of meaning on the page itself but is composed almost entirely of links that would communicate meaning through their very juxtaposition. I expect someone’s already done that, but it would be worth a try. One thing for sure - it would get you thinking about linking!

Last week I finally caved in and signed up for a Flickr Pro account. Why? Well, January’s a long month, I’d run out of free space for my photostream and the thought of three or four days not posting or doing pictureless posts was bugging me. Interestingly, when I started my blog I wasn’t that bothered about image content, but gradually as I began to visit more blogs (and think more about multimodality) I got into the idea of the visual element. I’m not big on photography, but interestingly having a Flickr photostream has changed my attitude. I like getting pictures of my neighbourhood and doing ’still-life’-type things (fruit, flowers, juggling balls etc). But with the blog, the words are in charge. I feel they’re my prime purpose. Image is decorative, illustrative or even tangential. Mostly I want the words to stand on their own…links to add depth or reference and images - well yes, I want them because they make the page look good. So there’s an aesthetic of design at work, but it runs secondary to the communicative act. If I had more time, my story runs, I’d learn how to tidy up my page, make the codes work for me etc. ..but it’s good enough for now.

I think what’s really interesting about this though, is that dynamic (or should I say organic?) quality of blogging. My blogging horizons have grown from very modest beginnings. I’ll have a go at this blog thing, nobody’ll find it, and even if they do, it will be anonymous or uninteresting. So I began with a few words, a few links - messages to myself really. Well, it’s a whole different ball game now. Working on Blogtrax has influenced my way of writing on the blog. Engaging more with Flickr has changed my attitude to digital images. The whole thing’s morphed and I’m really attracted to that… just recently, I started doing more diary-like descriptions of what I’ve been up to. Snapshots in words. Why? I just wanted to, and that’s the wonderfully free way you can approach blogging.

I’ve got a group of undergraduates working towards their dissertations and had to re-arrange a couple of tutorials. I did this very quickly - it was a busy day. So my message probably ran something like ‘Change meeting to Wednesday 2.30pm’, followed by my automated signature ‘open a window on myvedana.blogspot.com’.

Of course the poor unsuspecting reader wasn’t to know that this was an automated signature and assumed that her kindly tutor was providing a helpful link. Somehow, in clicking the link she was redirected to a news site discussing whether or not some supermodel had had cosmetic surgery!

‘What’s this myvedana.blogspot.com for?’
she asked when we met.
‘Oh, it’s my blog….do you know…’
I began.
‘So what’s breast enhancement got to do with techno-literacy practice?’
she quickly countered. I was lost.
‘A blog’s a sort of an online journal, and I do write some pretty wierd stuff.’
I went on. She nodded as if to humour me.
‘But I certainly don’t write about breasts.’
I noted, emphatically. She smiled sweetly and then said
‘I read the page for quite a long time, but couldn’t find anything that was relevant.’
I must have looked embarrassed.
‘It wasn’t smutty or anything’ she quickly added.
‘Oh.’ I said rather weakly.
‘I’m sorry for any misunderstanding.’

Justin Hall all over again. And for an awkward moment I imagined my vast and still largely hypothetical audience following the same bad link and wondering.

I was just wondering …

But I wanted to comment that I have noticed that people interact with me over different things in different spaces. The observation is this:
When I post pictures on my blog, people do not comment much or interact about them. So for example, on this post here I had only one comment - and that was received after a few days of the post being there. It is significant who commented - Mary Plain - she has asked me about photoshop several times and is also thinking of getting a camera. But in fact, I think she was just being polite in commenting - I had just commented on her blog.
Comparing this post (and there are other examples) with ones where the content is about areas of my research, people are much more keen to comment, like here.

Conversely, photos get lots of comments on Flickr. Now this might be an obvious point but lets move to some analysis.

Gee says that affinity spaces are about CONTENT. And people ARE selective over what content they want to interact about. There is a degree to which the stuff is just social. There is a lot of reciprocity that goes on, in terms of comments to and fro, but it has to be more than just social. There has to be a content PULL.

But this is just about comments. I wish we knew more about the silent lurkers - or blurkers - as Jackie would have it.

But also … why do you think hardly anyone reads this blog?

I’m spending a lot of time again thinking about my blog. I posted before about how fast moving this liquid world is and I was reminded of this talking to Dr J on the phone today. Even the affinity space is changing. Trois Tetes is silent, Mary Plain and Simply Clare have entered the arena. Strange thing I thought I heard their voices, and the geographical information suggested I might know them, but I was reluctant to reach any conclusions. Dr J revealed their true identity and only then did I feel OK about linking them on my blog. There’s something about inclusion in a social network here …that and the overlapping of real and virtual worlds.

Play, not surprisingly, is also on my mind (as a result of the up-coming ESRC series). I’ve been thinking about blog play and message play. The latter seems quite straight forward since it’s an extension or development of informal language games. But, blog play? Well blogs are quite playful…they can be frivolous (but not necessarily), they are boundary-blurring, but also they can be a bit like work, too. Can the blogosphere be seen as a play space? The play

…becomes an experience changing the person who experiences it…For play has its own essence, independent of the conciousness of those who play. Play also exists - indeed properly…where there are no subjects who are behaving ‘playfully’…The players are not the subjects of the play; instead the play merely reaches representation through the player.
(Gadamer, 1982)

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.