Blogtrax

I’ve just finished reading Siri Hustvedt’s novel ‘The Blindlfold’. Not surprisingly it’s all about identity and identity shifts, dislocation etc etc. But there’s one part that really stands out for me. The main character has just assumed an identity which involves adopting another name - a fictionalised identity. One of this character’s confidantes claims that ‘Fiction is not like life.’ - fair enough - but the response is brilliant, I’m sure I’ll use it as a quote sometime:

You know as well as I do that the line can’t be drawn, that we’re infected at every moment by fictions of all kinds, that it’s inescapable.

So I’m now pre-occupied by that phrase ‘ infected at every moment by fictions’. Of course the suggestion of disease or infection seems to carry a value judgement, but the nonetheless it also makes us see how the fictions we consume and the fictions we live by influence our self-narrative. Perhaps also the most severe forms of political oppression are achieved by innoculating the populace with dangerous fictions.

I’m probably just as enthusiastic as ever about blogging, but notice recently that I’ve been developing a couple of identity/themes. One is around the writing I’m doing - sort of chucking out ideas to see what they look like published, and to see if I get feedback. The other is much more day-in-the-life type narrative. Of course they blurr - I like that hybridity. (Interesting that’s the style adopted by Sue Thomas in her book Hello World.)

But the first of these things - the blog as a means of test-driving your ideas can be a bit frustrating. You either get no reaction; a reaction to the joke you put at the end; or a genuine bit of feedback. You can’t expect anything, but I guess I like the last one. For example, it happened here. But then it was the next day, the blogosphere rolled over and I don’t think many people are really going to comb through my archives. So maybe the blog is limited in this respect. It’s quite timebound and the level of interactivity has the status of marginalia. The blogger’s in charge.

Keeping the story going, seems to be the way our blogs work. We people them with our identities and our artefacts…and a bit that’s location-specific. In this repect, I wonder how useful Paul Ricouer is:

- we make sense of ourselves like characters in a story
- we follow the trajectory of a character through plot, aims and plans - in much the same way we author the self
- characters/identities can be refashioned in the course of the narrative
- characters/identities connect or interesect with others

Maybe this all works into a theory about self-presentation in the blogosphere.

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 driving somewhere in the car last weekend and :blush: I caught myself thinking about my blog and getting a little glow of satisfaction from the idea of people reading my most recent posting. Whatever it was, I must have thought it was pretty good! And that reflexive thought was, I must admit, a little bit uncomfortable. Boiling it down it’s blogging as SHOWING OFF - and, of course, my socio-cultural upbringing always makes me wary of showing off - and it does rather reduce being a blogger.

Sometimes though, when I read blogs, I get the sense that others are showing off, or to shift the idea, they are parading or promenading - displaying what they see as the interesting bits of their lives. And of course they really are interesting (sometimes). But also the more casual, throwaway postings capture my interest too. A blogger is having fun; a normally quite intense commentator leaks some ‘personal’ information or expresses an opinion with uncharacteristic vigour or a jokey blog suddenly gets serious. Even the trivial stuff - S blogs there’s snow in New York when it’s spring here, or A blogs spring flowers in Sydney when it’s autumn here - can turn out to be interesting.

So what am I really getting at? I suppose I’m underscoring the power of the reader (both the commentator and the passive consumer or blurker). The blog environment gives the reader plenty of freedom. OK, so the writer may glow with pride, thinking of her latest posting, but the reader may move quickly, perhaps dismissively through her links or even spend a desultory few seconds misinterpreting what’s there or even doing something else at the same time. But who, I wonder, spends the longest time reading my blog? Well I’m pretty sure it’s me. I love my blog and I like the way I say that stuff! It’s my space, and I like writing it and I’m now quite at ease with that fleeting thought that it’s vanity blogging. So, as a writer, I have the power and I’m in control at least for 10 or 15 minutes a day.

I think I’ve probably said before that commenting on postings isn’t a really big thing for me as a blogger. It isn’t my cup of tea. I don’t tend to leave comments on other people’s blogs and I’m not particularly bothered whether or not people leave them on mine. In fact, when I first started blogging I had the comments button ‘off’. Maybe this just reflects how I am in meatspace: sometimes I have the comments button off and I can’t be bothered to comment - I don’t know.

Coming back to blogging after a break, I was interested in how lively the comment scene had become for Dr J. OK, K was quiet, but MP, SC and Dr J were leaving comments on each others blogs. And others, too. People I knew had gone comment crazy. At first I felt a bit isolated, like being in the playground when a gang starts up and you’re not in it and people you like are. There’s a conversation going on, but no way in for you.

In Lincoln I started scribbling down what people were saying about comments. Comments about comments. (I haven’t asked permission or anything, so this is sailing close to the wind ethically speaking). Very interesting. MP in conversation: I like blogging cos I get comments; JG (a one-time blogger) I tried blogging, but I felt isolated - maybe I’ll give it another go; SC Even if I get just a few comments it’s OK.

I began to wonder if I’d got it wrong (was a bad blogger or such like), whether this was about different genres of blogs (and what we aspired to), different kinds of people….or gender. I still don’t know. A lot of the blogs I read don’t have many comments at all. But then again, some do. When they do, the tone varies from the rather light-hearted banter that you often get on boards to more serious on-topic ideas stuff, and just about every shade in between.

Anyway, I’ve had a funny week with the world of comments. Well, for a start off I’ve been a bit more outgoing. Rather than just commenting on Dr J, I’ve left comments on VC, A, MP, SC and S. At the same time, I’ve had my best ever week for getting comments - that is if ‘best ever’ is a crude count of the number of comments. One of the postings has drawn 9 (to date). But it’s clearly not simply a reciprocal thing. It’s not as if people have commented on mine because I commented on theirs. There’s not a neat correspondence, and what’s more I’ve had comments from two complete strangers (maybe it’s just because they see that there’s the ‘hum of conversation’; they don’t have to break a silence). I even had an email comment on a posting from someone in the office next door at work!

Have I done something different, this week? Become a nicer person, for instance. Invited comment? Chosen safe topics? Not, conciously. Nothing, unless you count my experiment with being a bit more outgoing - could that subtley come through by own postings? The only thing that comes to mind is the jokeiness of the weird pet theme - does that soften the blog, I wonder.

And after all this ‘mild comment frenzy’, do I care? Does it matter, and what might it change? Well, from the perspective of theory, I love the fact that blog readers can also be writers. Response is good, I’m seduced by the promise of interactivity. But also, when the audience waves you know they’re there and when they shout out, they’re engaging in some way or another.

I’ve not resolved to post differently now, to pander to my audience, to include pets more, or anything like that. I may or may not keep busy commenting on other bloggers. But I have noticed I keep an eye on my blog a bit more. Sometimes it’s down there on the bar while I work (I wonder if anyone else has left a comment?). I wonder if anyone will leave a comment?

Guy mentioned that he did not want to bore readers. This is a strong sense of audience; the one to many. And then there is also the shared responsibilityof this site. We are two voices ; we have a shared purpose, to explore the idea of blogs, of us as bloggers, the ‘blogosphere’ . But for each other we are a slightly different audience, I feel.
As time has gone on I have realised that commenters give me a strong sense of audience and I tend to write, thinking about vthem. I don’t just pander, but I find it helpful to think of ‘real people’ who may read.

But in this blog I am also thinking about the ’strong academic’; the ones I don’t know who I don’t want to think this siter is too trivial. But then again I am happy about the ideas being musings, unshaped.

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.

Anonymous said…
Now I am in a real dilemma. I have just replied… attempted to preview… and lost my witty response. So here goes again. But with less wit!

You do know me, but not very well. I think I know Kate, but she doesn’t know me. I am extremely grateful to you for your recent generosity. To reveal or not? I have a question/some questions first. Do you think about your audience when making your postings? Do you care about us? Do we help shape the representation of yourself that the blog is? I am interested in children’s use of sites like Bebo and Hi5 to create social identities for themselves - and am getting particularly interested in issues of control, when other children post onto friends’ sites - and how this relates to playground dynamics too.

Now you may know who I am… but my ego is appropriately wee, so you probably still don’t. I will leave you to muse.

Kate… sorry to hear about your bad day.

Bye for now

So says Clare on DrJoolz here.

Clare had posted comments on my blog every now and then, but I did not know who it was; I had in mind it may be an MA student but at first did not wonder for long. However, after a while I really wanted to know. This suggests I do care who reads and that I think about writing for a specific audience. Is this different from other writing though? I always try to think of a group of people who may read articles I write, or chapters for books (etc.) in order to help me write. This is not a special feature of blogging. But something that you can do is monitor who visits the site and people can join in. It is quite common on my blog for commenters to ytalk to each other and their text definitely is a key feature of the blog. This is the case also on Bitch PhD, or Profgirrrl and others.

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.