blogonblog

A blog about using blogs. Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker wrote: "Blogging Thoughts, personal publication as an online research tool". Next project is: "Intimate Confessions and Public Display". This blog works as space in which to collect ideas and tangents to this research.






1.7.04

 
blogOn
Just noting, for curiousity's sake, and for those who happen to come here by mistake, that BlogOn 2004, the conference on blogs hosted by UC Berkeley, has a blog named BlogOn Blog.

posted by Torill at 06:58

2.5.04

 
historical links
A 1999 Salon article on weblogs.

posted by Torill at 07:00

19.4.04

 
Some blog topics from Jill
Just linking them quickly here:

Mexican blogging - literary mexican blogging. More trackbacks and links from Jill's post.

Prehistory of blogs with Justin Hall by way of Jill.

posted by Torill at 02:24

9.3.04

 
Driving Elite Media Discourse
The Blogosphere (pdf), How a Once-Humble Medium Came to Drive Elite Media
Discourse and Influence Public Policy and Elections by Joel David Bloom.

abstract:
Abstract: In December of 2002, Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) resigned his position of Senate Majority Leader under pressure from the media, his own caucus and the White House. This pressure was the result of comments Lott made at a birthday party for retiring Senator Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party in which Lott seemed to wax nostalgic about segregation. But that’s not the whole story. Coming on a busy news day, the story was pushed aside by other news and not initially covered by the mainstream media. Kept alive, promoted, linked and sourced, among on-line “bloggers” – writers of weblogs, or frequently updated web sites with links and commentary – the mainstream media eventually came on board too. In this paper I use the Lott incident as an example of growing blogger influence in American politics and political communication.

posted by Torill at 01:24

24.6.03

 
Blogcount
By way of Hilde and Lisbeth: Blogcount, which estimates between 2,4 and 2,9 weblogs.

posted by Torill at 05:17

28.3.03

 
More blog teaching links

posted by Torill at 12:20

 
blogging thoughts link...

posted by Torill at 12:18

6.3.03

 
on the reading list
"Blogging thoughts" is on the reading list for HUCO-500: Cyberculture, at the University of Alberta, Canada.

posted by Torill at 00:16

24.2.03

 
Google buys blogger
This article (Wired News) speculates on why.

posted by Torill at 02:50

27.12.02

 
News and blogs
How blogs can shape opinions and bring news quicker than newspapers, an article in Wired by Noah Shachtman.

posted by Torill at 01:15

21.12.02

 
Personal knowledge publishing
and it's use in research, an article by Seb Paquet.

posted by Torill at 10:35

17.12.02

 
"Use the blog, Luke"
The irresistible title of an article by Steven Johnson in the technology and business section of salon.com.

by way of Jonblogg by Jon Hoem

posted by Torill at 09:54

22.11.02

 
Intimacy and publicity
Blogs are closely connected to the rhythm of daily lives. The postings are structured not by importance, topic or sensationalism, but by time. This way we get a journal which - while it's submitting to the strict linearity of time, it also submits to the non-linearity of how things happen. Lives are not structured by narrative models or dramatic curves, life is structured by the randomness of social networks, associations, nature, imagination, same as by the repetitiveness of certain needs: food, sleep, warmth, safety.

When the blogger publishes, this structure of life shines through. Noah makes a point out of his first personal post, when his private life shines through. But for those who know Noah, his personality has been evident all along. Look for instance, at how he attempts to put a discussion back on track: However, the conversation I hoped to start was not about who is lucky enough to live somewhere with a good, independent bookstore. I think the important issue here is link politics. This is Noah the organised, structured scholar, the man who likes to maintain focus, and who moderates discussions quite well and with a very friendly, positive voice. Now blogs don't let themselves be moderated like that, because the people he tries to get back on track don't need his moderation in order to speak: each and every one of them are in their own environment, where they can express their personal thoughts.

Occasionally blogs run parallel or keep referring back and forth to each other, and you get the impression of an public conversation. But how public is this conversation? Is it between the two, or are they using the conversation form to address the public? Perhaps they use the conversation - or comment - comment - comment form to develop, test and post their own thoughts, not really directed at anybody in particular? Again the tension between the public and the intimate: even in research blogs the personality and the events of life overrides the routines of blogging. Gonzalo travels to Europe, and ludology.org is suddenly slightly erratic. Adrian goes travelling, and his vlog concerns itself with non-spaces and nomadic writing. Jill gets problems with her hands, and she doesn't write for along period. These are traces of the body, the life of the writer, which may not be as explicitly personal as Noah's post about his car-crash, my posts about weather and life in Volda, Jill's posts about what Gonzalo will have for dinner when he arrives in Bergen, or Adrian's posts about the difficulties of having your heart in two countries.

The personally published blog contains this tension between the public and the intimate, no matter how much we work to keep to some academic topic in the blogging. Perhaps is that what makes it interesting?



posted by Torill at 00:50

9.11.02

 
Liz Lawley of Mamamusings posted this excerpt from a mailing list discussion of why / how blogs might be taking over after/from an email discussion culture. Apparently Foucault argues that western notions of subjectivity were developed through letter-writing and then (or simultaneously?) diary-writing. We should hunt down this reference for our intimacy article. Here's the excerpt from the mailing list post (by Jeffrey Jullich), the rest is archived here.
it reminded me of Foucault's ~Technologies of Self,~ as if that book had predicted this. In short, what ~Technologies~ says is that the two main forms by
which the West built up (the illusion of) Self and
the subject, how the West invented subjectivity, was
through letter-writing and diary-keeping. Having been
through a letter-writing phase (for a short seven
years ---since March 1994? The new List interface no
longer sub-divides into Archives and Early Archives),
for mysterious reasons the List atrophies and
"bloggers" begin to spawn off of it. Is it that the
preliminary exercise of having practiced Self through
a communal letter-writing mode has nurtured a
sufficient basis of Self for them to individuate off
(as though "blogging" paralleled the maturational
phase away from family)?



posted by Jill at 07:07

8.11.02

 
Intimacy and publicity, the ambivalence of blogs, is a dicotomy both tantalizing and confusing. This is the topic of our next blog exploration, one which will be run alongside the rest of our work. It's pure fun because we enjoy working together and like the way our different theoretical approaches enhance the finished work. We have not started looking for a place to publish it yet, finding a channel for the article is part of the process this time.

posted by Torill at 00:02

 

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