NetDynam 2.0

Title: The Discourse of Blogs and Wikis

Series Title: Continuum Discourse Series

Publication Year: 2009

Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

http://www.continuumbooks.com

Book URL: http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=132398&SearchType=Basic

Editor: Greg Myers

Hardback: ISBN:  9781847064134 Pages: 192 Price: U.S. $ 150.00

Hardback: ISBN:  9781847064134 Pages: 192 Price: U.K. £ 75.00

Paperback: ISBN:  9781847064141 Pages: 192 Price: U.K. £ 24.99

Paperback: ISBN:  9781847064141 Pages: 192 Price: U.S. $ 44.99

Abstract:

Blogs and Wikis have not been with us for long, but have made a huge impact
on society.  Wikipedia is the best known exemplar of the wiki, a
collaborative site that leads to a single text claimed by no-one; blogs, or
web-logs, have exploded into the mainstream through novelisations, film
adaptations and have gathered huge followings. Blogs and wikis also serve
to provide a coherent basis for a discourse analysis of specific web
language.

What makes these forms distinctive as genres, and what ramifications does
the technology have on the language?  Myers looks at how blogs and wikis:

*allow for easier than ever publication

*can claim to challenge institutional hierarchies

*provide alternate perspectives on events

*exemplify globalization

*challenge demarcations between the personal and the public

*construct new communities and more

Drawing on a wide range of popular blogs and wikis, the book works
alongside an author blog – http://thelanguageofblogs.typepad.com/ – that
contains regularly updated links, references and a glossary.  An essential
textbook for upper level undergraduates on linguistics and language studies
courses, it elucidates, informs and offers insights into a major new type
of discourse. This coursebook includes a companion website for student and
lecturer use.

it’s the blog on “the language of blogs” which appears to be a very good resource, with a lot of links to recent work on blog research, other blogs related to online research, and posts of relevance to our own interest. i think i might need to comment on some of those posts….

Having read resources offered by Frank, I’d like to elevate one. Clay Shirkey: Gin, Television and Social Surplus. April 23, 2008.

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise, I’d say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

[]

And it’s only now, as we’re waking up from that collective bender, that we’re starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We’re seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody’s basement.

Questions about how people use time, these days, may be framed (and analyzed,) within the rubric of behavioral economics. (I can’t do this myself, like Mr. Shirkey, I’m only able to offer phenomenological intuitions.) Still, I bring the frame of ‘time investment’ up because I suppose a finely differentiated analysis of how people actually deploy their time, with various internet utilities comprising part of the picture, would enrich intuitions.

For example, as I’ve mentioned before, a music fan can acquire more music (mp3s) than this fan can expect to deal with in the old sense of ‘dealing.’ This is true for other resources, such as ebooks, articles, movies, software; is true for any ‘object of potential interest’ discovered in the web, (or candy shop,) of intended and unintended distribution.

Time deployment exists in various contexts. These contexts can be described too. (I’m fairly sure Shirkey’s idealization doesn’t wash, were it to be suffer the details.) I wonder if cognitive surplus is accompanied in specific cases with its own surplus-derived stress?

What would constitute a robust conceptual ecology with respect to the factors of time investment and anticipation of benefit? Each of these is a very broad brush. For example how would time spent commenting on blog posts be accounted for were some benefit to figure into the account?

Another feature–these days–I term, truncation. Twitter exemplifies this, yet, also there are the short form messages tacked to Facebook walls, terse emails, blog and forum comments, abbreviated annotations of various sorts, and, of course, text messages.

I reckon truncation is not the result of having too much time.

Cooper, S. D. 2006: Watching the watchdog: Bloggers as the fifth estate. Spokane: Marquette Books.

Levinson, P. 2009: New new media. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

O’Neil, M. 2009: Cyberchiefs: Autonomy and authority in online tribes. London & New York: Pluto Press.

Rettburg, J. W. 2008: Blogging. Cambridge & Malden: Polity Press.

I’ve recently read these four books dealing with different aspects of the web 2.0 world, the common thread through all of them being that they each either touch on or concentrate on the place of blogging in the current netspace. It’s difficult to compare them in terms of content and reliability, because they each have something to offer in terms of content, however my own point of view and personal areas of interest render at least two of them worthy of steering the gentle reader well clear of.

It is these two which I will deal with first.

Read the rest of this entry »

What has the internet done to us?

K.I. gate, originally uploaded by eldon2042.

after all this time, i’ve just signed up to flickr. so far i am having a lot of fun. hmmm. it is simple and easy to use, and has a lot of features i want to use for organising photos.

this shot was taken as we were speeding back to catch the ferry to return to the mainland on our last day on kangaroo island. i had to hop out of the car and quickly take the shot, so i used the IXUS. it performs OK in most circumstances i think.

it’s one of my favourite shots – mainly because the composition works, and the grass looks good. also, i did not notice those two stones when i took the shot originally, but now i think they make the picture.

i used picasa to gather a few related shots into an ‘album’, and exported the album contents to the desktop so i could easily upload them. the export facility, by default, makes the images smaller, so a lot of the information is lost, but i’ll try out a non-reduced image shortly just to see whether any difference in quality is noticeable.

“I can see this thing being marketed to adults.”

[future iPads] “…less of a giant iPhone for old people.”

Well…somebody’s kid; publishing their review–574 views and counting.

Another millenial’s view.

Comment. Them younger peeps want me some robust gadgets and they want it all now! 

iPad will be a big hit. However, as an Apple user for 25+ years, and as a casual observer of Apple, I know enough to wait for the second generation to arrive. This will happen in 12-18 months. I haven’t checked out the full specs, so I’m hoping that its flash drive storage can be augmented via USB. The only other requirement for me personally would be that it can display Adobe Acrobat. This would allow me to read scholarly papers while horizontal. I don’t know why Apple hasn’t licensed Adobe Flash, although I could go and find out. Maybe some combination of dollars and security figure into this odd deficit.  

iPad connotation?

The scene used here has been redeployed many times in other parodies. Still, this works for me and is headed to viral heights.

Whereas the following video has already made rounds years ago.

posted recently on the CITASA list, what looks to be a work of interest to some of us. i’ve added the link to the downloadable file below – haven’t read it myself yet, but if the abstract is anything to go by….

“As if nobody’s reading’?: the imagined audience and socio-technical biases in personal blogging practice in the UK”

David Brake. (2009) PhD thesis, London School of Economics.

Abstract

This thesis examines the understandings and meanings of personal blogging from the perspective of blog authors. The theoretical framework draws on a symbolic interactionist perspective, focusing on how meaning is constructed through blogging practices, supplemented by theories of mediation and critical technology studies. The principal evidence in this study is derived from an analysis of in-depth interviews with bloggers selected to maximise their diversity based on the results of an initial survey. This is supplemented by an analysis of personal blogging’s technical contexts [what i've been wont to call 'affordances' -el] and of various societal influences that appear to influence blogging practices. Bloggers were found to have limited interest in gathering information about their readers, appearing to rely instead on an assumption that readers are sympathetic. Although personal blogging practices have been framed as being a form of radically free expression, they were also shown to be subject to potential biases including social norms [that's us! - el] and the technical characteristics of blogging services ['affordances' again]. Blogs provide a persistent record of a blogger’s practice, but the bloggers in this study did not generally read their archives or expect others to do so, nor did they retrospectively edit their archives to maintain a consistent self-presentation. The empirical results provide a basis for developing a theoretical perspective to account for blogging practices. This emphasises firstly that a blogger’s construction of the meaning of their practice can be based as much on an imagined and desired social context as it is on an informed and reflexive understanding of the communicative situation [sounds as if he has been reading us all this time?]. Secondly, blogging practices include a variety of envisaged audience relationships, and some blogging practices appear to be primarily self-directed with potential audiences playing a marginal role [and, i feel we may be framed here again]. Blogging’s technical characteristics and the social norms surrounding blogging practices appear to enable and reinforce this unanticipated lack of engagement with audiences [indeed]. This perspective contrasts with studies of computer mediated communication that suggest bloggers would monitor their audiences and present themselves strategically to ensure interactions are successful in their terms. The study also points the way towards several avenues for further research including a more in-depth consideration of the neglected structural factors (both social and technical) which potentially influence blogging practices, and an examination of social network site use practices using a similar analytical approach

well, i’m convinced that the work will be worth reading, and very interested in what david proposes.

available with this link

discussion is invited on the blog at: http://groupblog.workasone.net/archives/00389.html