Linkety-link
Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on the second section of my MA dissertation . I'm trying to put together a piece that gives a brief history of, and contextualises, blogs and blogging. At the end of the section I'm planning to veer more into a focus of blogs within academia to kind of set things up for my case studies. Although I initially thought that I would find this section easy, because it's fairly straightforward in its aims and methods, I've actually been really struggling with it and, while I've done a fair bit of work, I've also been allowing myself to get really distracted: cleaning the flat, watching and reading about Big Brother (which feels like eating a whole bag of something wholly lacking in nutrition and loaded with additives), and generally slouching about. In order to try to reclaim some kind of productivity before the weekend (when my fabulous friends from Edinburgh arrive - woooo-hoooo!) I'm hoping to motivate myself with the list below. The articles here are ones I've found really useful in my preparation to write the above mentioned second section. Most, if not all, of them I filched from the fabulous Kairosnews Weblog webliography which was just too useful for words.
1. A fantastic introduction from the author of the wonderful Rebecca's Pocket blog. 'Weblogs: A History and Perspective.' Rebecca Blood.
2. This article really appealed to me especially as my interests lie particularly with the practice and theory of blogging within the academic community. Here Clancy Ratliff explores, through the example of the Invisible Adjunct blog, the potential for blogs to act as community-building spaces that may "critique institutional practices and propose institutional reform." Read it! 'Making the Adjunct Visible: Normativity in Academia and Subversive Heteroglossia in the Invisible Adjunct Weblog Community.' Clancy Ratliff. Also worth checking out is Clancy Ratliff's wicked (and I mean wicked as in 'brilliant') blog CultureCat.
3. This is an interesting discussion of the development of norms within a blog community, raising particularly interesting issues regarding norms that evolve naturally and those that come about as the result of the creation of more formally organized blogging communities. What grabbed my attention was that Wei's case study is of a Knitting Bloggers webring - a ring that includes some of the very first blogs I came accross when I was surfing for knitting tips online. 'Formation of Norms in a Blog Community.' Carolyn Wei.
4. Another good overview, with great references to other articles on this subject. 'Personal Knowledge Publishing and its Uses in Research.' Sebastien Paquet.
That is just a taster of the writing that's out there on blogging. I suspect that, over the next couple of years, there will be more and more writing on blogging published offline. Right now, however, I'm intensely grateful to the generosity of those both who put their ideas online and who compile collections of writing on this subject, without whom my research would involve a whole lot more stabbing in the dark.
1. A fantastic introduction from the author of the wonderful Rebecca's Pocket blog. 'Weblogs: A History and Perspective.' Rebecca Blood.
2. This article really appealed to me especially as my interests lie particularly with the practice and theory of blogging within the academic community. Here Clancy Ratliff explores, through the example of the Invisible Adjunct blog, the potential for blogs to act as community-building spaces that may "critique institutional practices and propose institutional reform." Read it! 'Making the Adjunct Visible: Normativity in Academia and Subversive Heteroglossia in the Invisible Adjunct Weblog Community.' Clancy Ratliff. Also worth checking out is Clancy Ratliff's wicked (and I mean wicked as in 'brilliant') blog CultureCat.
3. This is an interesting discussion of the development of norms within a blog community, raising particularly interesting issues regarding norms that evolve naturally and those that come about as the result of the creation of more formally organized blogging communities. What grabbed my attention was that Wei's case study is of a Knitting Bloggers webring - a ring that includes some of the very first blogs I came accross when I was surfing for knitting tips online. 'Formation of Norms in a Blog Community.' Carolyn Wei.
4. Another good overview, with great references to other articles on this subject. 'Personal Knowledge Publishing and its Uses in Research.' Sebastien Paquet.
That is just a taster of the writing that's out there on blogging. I suspect that, over the next couple of years, there will be more and more writing on blogging published offline. Right now, however, I'm intensely grateful to the generosity of those both who put their ideas online and who compile collections of writing on this subject, without whom my research would involve a whole lot more stabbing in the dark.
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