The End

So that's it! My argument and response to Mortensen and Walker's article on blogs. I hope you have enjoyed reading what I had to say about it, and found my website and blog interesting to have a look around.

Take care all,

Kat

Money, Money, Money

Hi all,

I am close to finishing my analysis on blogs. But before I write my conclusion, I think it is necessary to further compare how blogs have changed from their creation in 1997 to the present...

Blogs have become increasingly popular for corporations in advertising and marketing products. Brands such as Sprite, Nike and Adidas have all succumbed to the power of the blog and the enormous following they have.

An example such as Tila Tequila’s recent rise to fame was due to the fact that she had over 40,000 friends on MySpace. For advertisers, this was a goldmine, as a simple banner on her blog would potentially mean that 40,000 people would see their product or service. This indicates how the idea and practical use of a blog has evolved, as companies are now looking to use people who have a large following to disseminate products and merchandise. Even though these companies are not actually creating a blog, they are using the blog medium to target potential customers. Due to the fact that MySpace has 27 million users, the majority of them being 20 years of age or younger, and rivals the number of pages viewed monthly for Google, News Corp bought the company for $850 million (Kim, 2006).

Not only are blogs used to share ideas, to write about how one is feeling or whether or not they agree with something, they are also being used to generate revenue. Some may say this is just another area where greedy corporations are trying to get their hands on as much money as they possibly can. I personally don't think it matters too much and actually think it isn't a bad idea, as long as advertisers don't go overboard.

Blogs: A Safe Sanctuary or Dangerous Den?

Hi again everyone,

The following information may be a bit disturbing for some people, as I have made links to sites that may upset or offend visitors to further analyse and explore Mortensen and Walker's excerpt.

Loci amoeni refers to an idealized place of safety and comfort. Unlike loci amoeni, blogs are not shut off from the world (Mortensen and Walker, 2002) or seen as a place of safety and comfort. It is a space that is somewhat cordoned off where someone can explore without having to reveal personal details to everyone (Matrullo, 2002).

On the one hand, one could argue that it is a place of safety and comfort, as someone writes their own thoughts down and feel better for being able to write something in metaphoric privacy. On the other hand, if their idea or topic interests enough people, it can snowball. In contrast, blogs can be altered to either show who posted it, or to be completely anonymous. While bloggers can remain anonymous, their ideas and thoughts are not. It may be a safe place for someone to express themselves without fear of getting into trouble, but in terms of voicing opinions and thoughts, it is an extremely dangerous place to be in.

One example of this is how easily terrorists around the world can get in touch with each other and disseminate ideas. Obviously, a terrorist isn’t going to divulge specific ideas and details about how they are going to carry an attack out, but because you can find almost anything on the Internet, an idea can easily turned into something more dangerous. Another example is the disturbing increase in websites promoting suicide and anorexia. In the past 12 months, there has been a disturbing increase in suicides in Wales (Britten and Savill, 2008). It appears that these teenagers only kill themselves so that a memorial website where people can write things about them is created in their memory (Britten and Savill, 2008).

On pro anorexia websites, girls and women suffering from anorexia write about how much they have eaten and how much weight they are trying to lose (livejournal.com). In some posts, there was only a bit of writing at the beginning, and then a huge white space where writing should be, and then they sign off with their name. Whether it be the fact that I am not an avid blog reader and don’t own a blog, apart from this one, I was surprised to find that when I highlighted this information with my mouse, there was writing there. But this writing was hidden for a reason - the stuff I highlighted and read was quite disturbing and detailed how much they weighed, how much they had eaten for the day and so on.

Even seemingly harmless sites such as YouTube have provided good ground for people to post videos similar to those blogs mentioned in the above paragraph. For example, the shooter from the Viriginia Tech killings posted a video on YouTube, where he talked about his ideas of killing people. While the Internet provides a plethora of useful information for a variety of topics, there is also extremely dangerous and questionnable stuff, such as the videos of the Virginia Tech atrocity, that could act as a trigger for others to follow in the same footsteps and to do the same.

If this is applied to loci amoeni, it suggests that negative and in some cases, life endangering blogs can be published to a huge audience. While I am for having the Internet as a free space for anyone to post what they want, it is also an extremely dangerous place for such ideas to linger and in some cases, to be taken seriously. I know in my previous post I said that the sharing of ideas and information is beneficial to everyone, there are blogs that contain unsavoury elements that are always going to be present, no matter how hard people try to censor and shut down such blogs.

But what can be done? I think the sharing and linking of ideas is vital for the Internet and extremely beneficial for everyone to use, but sometimes, things get taken a bit too far.

Mmmm...chocolate!

This next topic is where I got my idea for my sign-in name for this blog...

The phrase, ‘Scandinavian flavoured hypertext weblog cluster’, was coined by Mark Bernstein, a chief scientist at Eastgate Systems (Bernstein, 2000). As Bernstein asserts, it is “one of the best places in the world to read about new developments in new media” (Øvrebø, 2004). This notion suggests that when someone stumbles across an area that interests them on the Internet, they have the power and capacity to leave behind what Anders Fagerjord called a ‘surftrail’ of ideas (Mortensen and Walker, 2002).

Yet Bernstein criticizes bloggers for having relationships between themselves, not between ideas (Bernstein, 2000). Blogging has become more a locus for social interaction than the interlinking and evolution of ideas and thoughts. Bernstein questions whether comments reduce writers’ desire to link (Bernstein, 2000) whilst writing blogs. The bloggers once active in the ‘clustering’ of ideas no longer respond to posts the way they used to (Øvrebø, 2004).

Fagerjord argues that blogs and the idea behind them is still present, yet the intense academic and theoretical discussion has vanished (Fagerjord, 2004). This seems to contradict what blogs stand for, as people enjoy the freedom and easy access to blog content, whilst being able to critique or compliment it easily. The number of blogs in cyberspace is increasing, but their academic content may be slowly decreasing. On the other hand, the number of posts dedicated to political discussion and socially relevant topics such as global warming are multiplying at an extraordinary rate. Relevance and issues of major concern are what people nowadays want to discuss at length and to try and resolve, hence the exponential growth of blogs - because people want to have a say on these issues and to discuss them with other people with differing beliefs.

Blogs - Connecting People

Hey hey hey!

So now I am moving onto the aspect of roots and tendrils, as quoted from Mortensen and Walker...

Some blogs are short and unpretentious (Mortensen and Walker, 2002), which suggests that not all blogs are academic. I know I've said this in several previous posts, but I just want to make sure people are aware that blogs are not only used for personal reasons but rather to share ideas and information. Whether it be photos, videos, a short poem or a long essay related to globalisation, the purpose is exactly the same - to share and connect people from all over the world to one idea or sliver of information.

On the other hand, bloggers and academics alike have developed the capacity to condense a large amount of information into a short blog entry. Michael Wesch’s video, Web 2.0… The Machine is Us/ing Us (Wesch, 2007) forces him to do exactly that: condense a wide span of information on web 2.0 into basic ideas and thoughts. Wesch also explores the notion that images, sound and video on the Internet are used to connect people, both informationally and socially: “Digital text is no longer just linking information…Hypertext is no longer just linking information…The Web is no longer just linking information…Web is linking information…Web is linking people…Web 2.0 is linking people…people sharing, trading, and collaborating” (Kelly, 2005). Without being able to link and share ideas about things, the blogging community would fail.

This relates directly to my previous argument about Jenkins and his lambasting and labelling bloggers as 'cockroaches'. Without people accessing the Internet to discuss and sometimes debate topics that interest them, then Merholz's notion of 'we blog' would fail miserably. How can people be expected to be proactive and to use the Internet for the sharing of ideas when academics such as Jenkins are criticising them for something I believe is a necessity? I honestly can't imagine what the Internet would be like without having people who are dedicated to commenting on other people's work available for everyone to obtain.

If a reference is made to Mark Pesce's video 'Those Wacky Kids', he said that he could surf the Internet in the old days in a matter of hours because there was such a limited amount of information on it. If a comparison is made to today, there are an infinite number of websites and blogs on the Internet suggesting that Jenkins really has no leg to stand on and that he has no idea what he is talking about. A point must also be made to the dissemination and span of ideas that this accessibility to the Internet means. I can look at a blog on web 2.0 originating from India and then click to view another blog on web 2.0 originating from Canada. It is so simple and easy to get a hold of this information that would've taken so much more time and effort if we were to try and do so when Pesce first used the Internet.

I am certainly thankful for the immense amount of stuff we can access today. Not only has it given lots of people a chance to learn more, but, more importantly, it also allows people to experience things they may never have experienced before, thanks to the interconnectivity that blogs provide.

Plus, it's pretty cool to be talking to people from all over the world and to meet them on your blog for some discussion about sports, politics or movies!

Academics and cockroaches

Ugh. What a day. If I could, I would go to bed right now and sleep for hours and hours. I am so tired. I know it's the last week of uni and all, but I have never felt this lethargic in a while. Maybe it's the change of weather. Or maybe I just really need to have a good, long holiday back home without worrying about assignments and deadlines.

Anyway, enough bitching from me for now. I must get down to the nitty-gritty issue of Mortensen and Walker's excerpt...

Academics are jumping on board and using blogs to communicate to a wider audience. Henry Jenkins treated bloggers as a research topic, referring to them as ‘cockroaches’ and forms of ‘extreme sports'. What was surprising was how bloggers reacted to these labels, with a huge divide between how bloggers perceived themselves and how they were viewed by others, especially academics. Bloggers were outraged and somewhat ironically used the platform of his blog, to respond to his work. Jenkins has only recently re-established his blog after his cockroach comment (Walker, 2006).

"Like cockroaches after nuclear war, online diarists rule an Internet strewn with failed dot coms. (…) Bloggers are turning the hunting and gathering,sampling and critiquing the rest of us do online into an extreme sport. We surf the Web; these guys snowboard it. Bloggers are the minutemen of the digital revolution." - Jenkins

Naturally, anyone is allowed to say almost anything they want to on the Internet without getting into trouble. But the fact that these bloggers took it so seriously shows how much they take their 'job', if you want to call it that. I do agree with them, however. Jenkins overexaggerates the content of blogs, as he relates it to an 'extreme sport'. Yet without bloggers doing what they do online, everything Mortensen and Walker wrote and theorised about would fall through. There would be no online communities of thought, no roots or connections established. Essentially, all of the information on the Internet wouldn't be as densely interlinked as it currently is.

The point I am trying to make is that without having links to other blogs, either in support or against the content of the blog, information wouldn't be shared as intimately as it is, and ideas wouldn't be a collection of beliefs, thoughts and feelings belonging to a vast amount of people.

Another side of the argument could stem from the fact that a form of two-way communication was established, as people unfamiliar with Jenkins’ and his work could experience some of his classroom conversations and he could interact with people he wouldn't normally talk to (Walker, 2006). Millions of websites are dedicated to helping people learn about Maths, English and Physics, with thousands of university websites where people can access lectures, yet real learning and research happens more in the intersections between experiences and ideas found in conversations on blogs and social groups (Walker, 2006).

Extension of man, man!

Now if I can pick up where I left off a few posts ago...

Ah yes, that's it. I was talking about how blogs differ from person to person, and the fact that they can be designed in a variety of ways, which ultimately reflects the blog creator's personality and taste. I found some useful information about the theory behind this seemingly simple idea.

Many bloggers consider their posts to be an extension or representation of themselves (Boyd, 2006). Marshall McLuhan’s phrase, “the medium is an extension of man” (Federman, 2004) applies here, as the Internet allows people to create an extension of themselves via a relatively new medium. With ready access and availability around the world, the task of making an ‘extension of themselves’ is also relatively easy. It has even been argued that “the community resides in the mind of the individual blogger as an online imagined community resulting from the shared experience of instant publishing” (Trevino, 2005).

Each blogger has the capacity to develop a distinct style; one that emerges from the creativity of the producer and reflects their personal character (Edmonds, 2005). Williams and Jacobs assert that rather than “alienate a readership by exposing one's personal traits and idiosyncrasies, it adds to the very popularity of blogs, as ‘exhibitionistic behavior is encouraged, supported, and even sought’ by the ‘cyber-voyageurs’ of this theater” (William and Jacobs, 2004). Further, blogs facilitate feedback from peers, supporting knowledge building; and help form new contextualizations in learning through the immediate sharing of other materials through hyperlinks (Williams and Jacobs, 2004).

This notion can be directly linked to Mortensen and Walker's excerpt on how blogs are like roots and fragments reaching out for each other. Once one idea has been published on the Internet, someone somewhere will read it, and either comment on it, or begin a discussion from it. Even a small comment has the potential to snowball into a related topic to the body of what was being commented on, or to build on what was already said. I found McLuhan's idea of blogs as an "extension of man" to be an excellent analogy for the behaviour associated with blogs, as blogs are, to a certain extent, digital representations of oneself. The topics someone writes about, the ideas, the tone and even the design of a blog is all that people have access to when surfing the web. Through this, opinions and thoughts are disseminated in the enormous span that is the Internet, which leads to communities of thought and ideas.

Ah, that was a big paragraph. I also like to think of blogs as a disguise of some sort; although blogs are personalised, they aren't always representative of the person writing it. Anyone can pretend to be someone else on the Internet, which poses a huge range of problems. I'll cover this in a later post...

For now, I am going to give my wrists and fingers a rest from all this typing!