Blogtrax

It’s very interesting to try to trace changing perceptions of the blogging phenomenon. Although some commentators are suggesting that interest in blogging is beginning to dwindle (or reach a steady state) and that most blogs have a relatively brief shelf-life, they have at the same time begun to attract more attention. Traditional media sources regularly comment on blogging - often snarling at any suggestion of citizen journalism - and stories about blogging incidents are certainly newsworthy. Most recently the threatening comments story attracted interest and the proposed ‘code of conduct’ provoked hot debate. But this was frequently turned on us, the blogging community, who were perceived as self-interested, narcissistic or simply irrelevant. I actually felt quite insulted by the ‘why would anybody want to blog’ tack taken by some traditional journalists. Why would anybody write? Why would anybody want to express themselves? Why would anyone want to experiment with new tools of communication? Why shouldn’t people remain passive and silent… need I say more? The so what argument is very irritating- and I don’t think that’s just a defensive reaction.

However, when blogger friends slow up in their posting and presumably in their enthusiasm, I suppose you do stop and think. But then I’m aware of how they only represent a small segment of the writing/reading blog culture, and so the blogging goes on. Interestingly, I was at a meeting of academics last month, when someone suggested that a new initiative required a blog. The ‘groan’ reaction was interesting - but I wasn’t quite clear whether it was a groan of reluctance (we’ve been here before), a groan of overload (not more reading/writing), or a groan that suggested that somehow the blogging format was now passe.

In an interesting contrast to this, as I begin to introduce blogging to students, there is more interest. It’s as if something exotic has now been tamed. And of course it has been in VLEs. Here blogging is behind bars. But I’m quite positive about that, because I’ve noticed that as students and teachers become more habituated to the blog (and wiki) tools - we use them in the Blackboard environment - they begin to understand the purposes and principles a bit better. And, at the same time, they begin to understand the limitations in terms of audience and functionality. I’m still quite content to blog away! Sometimes I have more to say than others; sometimes my postings are lightweight, sometimes they atempt to record ideas or trends that are significant (at least to me). A lot of the time, now it feels more like building up an archive and Blogger’s introduction of tags certainly helps to create this sort of mindset.

I still feel proud of my blog and rarely look back at postings and think ‘I wish I hadn’t said that’ - I don’t tend to edit posts after publishing except to mend a broken link or when there’ s a mistake that makes things unclear. The most personal side of my blog is my use of images. I’m not a photographer, but I like to have a visual element. What I really enjoy is the juxtaposition. Sometimes my Flickr image will have absolutely nothing to do with the written text, other times it will have a meaning to me (and maybe one or two others) - and at other times it will pun or simply illustrate the post.

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 thinking about the architecture of blogging and photo-sharing environments and how they offer different possibilities, or social affordances for identity performance and networking. You could see the blogosphere and the Flickrverse as buildings or city-scapes which we inhabit, claim, belong in and interact within. Of course, we know there are other places - virtual worlds; MUDs; MMPOGs etc etc, but an in depth analysis of what happens, how meanings are made, how allegiances are formed and how identity is negotiated within these smaller, often inter-related domains is what really interests me.

I suppose it’s a case of belonging somewhere, having a sort of neighbourhood - a digital arena you play in. Mostly feeling comfortable in these two zones, being socialised into them and having neighbours helps. And of course you get to know people in different ways - and in turn maybe that brings out different things in you.

It’s also interesting how both blogging and photo-sharing seem to promote a heuristic frame of mind. Eve Bearne said that through reflective writing themes emerge. That’s spot on. Could you also extend that to reflective imaging? When I heard what Eve said I went wow (inside)…thinking about all those blank-page-moments of my own school life and even later those moments that education seems to run over and over again. What are you interested in? What’s your research question? Starting from scratch.

It would be tedious to trawl back through the blog, but themes develop through a process of refinement and sedimentation - other possibly fruitful lines die off in the process. Same with the imaging process. Sets in Flickr provides that organisational function, the heuristic tool (YAY!) to identify what’s beginning to emerge through the messy process of collecting.

Both the identity performance theme and the heuristic theme don’t, however, happen in isolation. So, the social affordances, the architecture of these virtual spaces seems to be what makes us feel at home in displaying our wares and inviting different kinds of interaction and, in turn shapes what we do.

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.

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.

Adrift from my social/virtual networks for nearly 6 months makes it quite interesting (interesting and scary) to begin participating again. I’ve been doing a fair bit of txting and messaging, but that’s all one-to-one stuff and I must say I left the blogging thing till last. Why? Well it’s an affinity thing and when you’ve been out of the loop it’s like starting all over again. One-to-many, more a performance, a performance of a blogging identity that’s been mothballed. You know how time moves fast with bloggers and digital culture in general and I had the feeling I had lots of homework to do. For a start there’s this great looking, but unfamiliar writing space for Blogtrax…some new tools here, but it looks very good. (I’m glad Dr J did this, it’s obviously an improvement - I’ve got lots to learn!). Then there’s all the posts on here I haven’t read yet. And that’s before I start catching up on all the other posts in my networks. I think I’ve decided it’s pointless trying to catch up on anything I’ve missed. Do you really miss stuff? Missing stuff implies that there’s a sort of ideal state in which you’ve read everything by everybody. Anyway that was just the feeling I had.
Finally, today, after thinking about it and then trying to avoid thinking about it and then trying to do it without thinking about it too much I plunged in. Blogged my first post on my personal blog and then forgot about it. A couple of hours later found myself thinking that people who used to read it must have, by now, given up even thinking about it, let alone visiting it. So, that’s interesting. Just as it was when I started. No audience. Then slowly I realised that some of my friends were checking it. I can watch this happen again and note that here.
On Flickr - I think that’s now quite definitely in this research frame - a few new comments (nice) and a whole new distribution of views. So what was popular when I left has now sunk down the charts and some wall-art, at first almost ignored, has attracted attention. Anyway, here I am again, posting in this new place and secretly hoping that it won’t come out all wonky and show me up!

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??)

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.

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.