Blogtrax

I was steaming with anger! Flickr wouldn’t let me post to my blog likes its been doing smoothly for the last 5 years. 2 days in a row. That’s ourageous! I repeated that simple Post It keystroke time and time again. First patiently, then more firmly and then with expletives and finally with the plams-up appeal gesture so well rehearsed as a way of communicating with bad decisions from referees. How could this possibly happen? I tried again, hitting the keyboard hard, as I imagined that the faceless operatives at Flickr would sense my frustration telepathically through the keyboards. And then sotto voce ‘Come on you bastards!’

After an episode like this I usually manage to calm down again in a routine probably instilled in me way back in childhood. OK calm down there’s probably a perfectly good reason. Try another machine. ….same again. All right then look around Flickr and check the blog registration. No fine. That’s fine, so what’s really going on? Eventually I thought I’d check the boards (I don’t really like them which is why that was the last port of call) and lo and behold there’s a long long trail of similar complaints, reassurances from the Flickr people, advice from other bloggers and so on. I just put ‘Get it sorted’ and left.

Co-incidentally - I think - I went on and posted this on digital provenance using the Blogger picture function. The irony being that part of the digital crossing that I was tracing involved a direct reference to Flickr!
In the cold light of day, and in the reflexive spirit that is the Blogtrax project, I’ve been pondering on why the Flickr glitch was so emotional for me. Do I become socially or digitally dysfunctional when apps go out of wack? What would happen if blogger went down with the credit crunch/downturn/financial tsunami whatever? How many expressive tools need to shut down before one has to seriously reconsider one’s habitual identity performance?

Anyway it was so reassuring when coming around to posting these troubling thoughts to find a comment here. Sometimes Blogtrax feels like a lonely outpost on the digital frontier. Blogging has become so normal that its getting harder to ‘make the familar strange.’ Harder, but of course no less worthwhile because of that.

I started taking pictures of padlocks. As a matter of fact I copied the idea from someone else. Here’s a short exchange on my photostream

lizjones112 Pro User says:
Nice shot, I’m glad I’m not the only one who takes pictures of padlocks!

on-the-run Pro User says:
Actually it’s contagious. I thought your’s were so good that I suddenly found myself copying!!

lizjones112 Pro User says:
Thank you, glad to know I can inspire others to take interesting pictures

I wrote about this on my own blog, referring to visual memes, but all the time I was thinking about copying and the whole ambiguity of that culturally located concept of copying. I guess we are first socialised into the complexities and nuances of copying in school. We learn for example that:

- close imitation is good in certain contexts (such as letter formation, lining up, singing, turning somersaults, using technical vocabulary)

- imitation is bad, when we make fun of how people walk, speak and so on…that is as long as they are not legitimate targets (and of course what constitutes a legitimate target varies from situation to situation)

- imitation is good in creative tasks, particularly in the broad sweep of things such as kinds of representation, writing genres and so on

- imitation is bad in creative tasks when it shows a lack of originality and when it is a straightforward (literal) copy

In a nutshell, we learn by copying and we learn not to copy. Our academic life is shot through with similar notions about copying. Plagiarism is bad, summarising someone else’s ideas and acknowledging them is good. Doing a similar thing to someone else locates you in a particular discipline or field. Doing exactly the same thing is unoriginal etc etc. Underlying all this there seem to be some cultural constructs about individuality, originality, authority and authorship that are related to the way that knowledge and learning are conceived of and policed in the dominant Western paradigm. These are all concepts that new media and new technologies challenge. Yet, we still prize the originality of our blogs even if we riff off the posts of others; we celebrate the uniqueness of the images in our photostream even when we are inspired by others. Cut/paste, capture/remix, and rip/burn technologies suggest how we can make new knowledge or art out of the work of others. Originality and creativity is perhaps re-defined in terms of the juxtapositions we make, the new links we establish. What we do then is less like orchestrating new comments more like deejaying, seguing one idea track into another whilst still keeping our audience on the dance floor. Maybe copies our OK (after all they serve DJs well), we are distinctive in the versions we have and the combinations and sequences we make and, of course, the spaces in which we produce them. After all that’s where we perform our identity and develop our reputation.

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.

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 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?

‘The existential question of self identity is bound up with the fragile nature of the biography which the individual ’supplies’ about herself.A person’s identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor - important though this is - in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual’s biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing ’story’ about the self.’ (Giddens 1991: 54).

Yes that’s what I do; in my blog this is what I do. I have an ongoing story. But I think we have several ongoing stories. I also think that if we bear in mind a particular audience, we change our story to suit them and ths change our notion of who we are according to our audience.

So as Guy says, I use lots of pictures at the moment. What am I saying? I think I am saying I believe the visual is really imortant. But more than that, I am building up layers of semiotics because I want all these to be taken into consideration alongside the words I write. I think I am trying to bring my ‘hinterland’ to the fore. It is showing off in mnay ways.

*Gauntlett,D. (2002) in Media Gender and Identity Routledge page 99

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.

Many of the photographs on Flickr are images of the photographers themselves and of the photographers’ families and friends.
These are often accompanied by comments which give further details of family lives, friendships and collegial relationships.
The co-existance of the private/public space so often associated with online groups,is illustrated really clearly on the Flickr site and some of the shots I have seen are really intimate or of really important family moments - weddings, births even.
Meta photography is very popular and some people put deliberately provocative photos of themselves online. TT has a lovely post on this topic here.
It is as if in some spaces on theInternet there is a very strong sense of affinity, of trust and of defiance of all the stranger danger and discourses around the abuse of digital affordances by pornographers.
I had noticed when I was looking at Wiccan teens that in say 2002 - 2003 there were a great number of teens putting photos of themselves on thier webpages. Yet now this has massively decreased, presumably because of increased awareness of the danger discourses I referred to above.
I don’t know why, therefore there is this diffrence on the Flickr site. Maybe the ‘danger’ factor has fallen into obeyance since the stronger discourses are abbout the value of the photograph and the value of the affinity space itself. Maybe because of the ubiquity of digital cameras, digital photos etc that people feel less threatened by what can happen. The Flickr community maybe values the digital image so highly they cannot see the fear factor anymore?
People seem to want to offer a visual narrative of parts of theirlives, seeing themselves online, presenting a particular identity, and telling people in their comments, how to read the pictures.
Is there too much trust on this site?

I have done a lot of different types of post over the last few months.
There have been some which have related very specifically to literacy and an exploration of what a text is.
I have reflected on ideas I have read about or heard about, which have been totally academic related. I have reported on conferences and seminars.
I have written lists of books I want to read - thus showing my orientation towards particular topics and making a decision about what kind of identity I want to present for DrJoolz.
Sometimes I have been reflective about my posts.

So I have worked hard to show myself as academic it seems; but in doing so I have been thinking academically, reflecting on my workand trying to get others to talk with me about the content of my posts. (And academics have often responded.)

I have also used my blog to plot political views during the general election; to put across academic and political views about what is on television; I have even taken the risk and made comments about the wedding of Prince Charles and Chinchilla and made less than respectful noises about the pope. I have therefore used my blog as SOCIAL and POLITICAL COMMENTARY.

I have told stories about me in pictures and in words. I have even told the world my feelings in a very uncharacteristic act of openess. This was a very strange thing to do. I have given lists which reflect my interests, my preferences. I have shown things about my family relationships and those with friends and colleagues. This posts were personal narratives. Showing myself in what I do and in in my depiction of relationships.

More on types of posts next time …