Week 5 Board Discussion

Author: Gwyneth Peaty
Date: Saturday, September 26, 2009 3:57:18 PM WST
Subject: Official 2.1 “blogging” discussion thread: Rebecca Blood, Blogs and Journalism
Hi everyone, welcome to week 5:
Blogging. There is a lot going on this week, so I have divided the
discussion into two threads to see if that makes things a little
easier to organise. Please don’t feel you are forbidden from
discussing anything but ‘Blood, blogs and journalism’ – this is
simply a starting point from which to draw out some of the key themes
this week. Also, please feel free to start your own threads
discussing your adventures with RSS and the blogosphere!Some questions to start us off:

 

In 2000 Rebecca Blood predicted ‘the power of
weblogs to transform both writers and readers from “audience”
to “public” and from “consumer” to “creator.”‘ How do these ideas stand up in 2009?

What do you think about the
relationship between blogs and journalism?
- What are the effects of blogging upon
the mainstream press?

- What do you see as the role of the ‘citizen journalist’?

I can honestly only remember reading one blog on a regular basis, I have never really found them to be of interest to me especially for news and opinions. Something that turned me off blogs rather quickly was the comments being posted, people would get off topic, and post spam or just rant, there usually is a lot of nonsense to sift through to get to the good stuff.

Having a couple clients who use blogs as a marketing tool I guess that I am over what they offer. It is common for a client to get 10 blogs created, each with different templates and on separate domains. It takes literally minutes to install WordPress, templates and plugins needed to use RSS. I can see how blogs are used in a negative way such as this, it is relatively easy to get all these sites listed in Google and dominate keywords that they are targeting.

What do you think about the relationship between blogs and journalism?

There is no doubt that there is a relationship between the two, however, for me I am not interested in reading a blog from a journalist. My reasons for this are I simply do not trust what I read online, anyone is able to make a site look legit and post any information, making it hard to trust the information.

What are the effects of blogging upon the mainstream press?

I think that blogging is allowing many journalists out there to express their own opinion, allowing us to get an insider’s opinion, someone who was there and saw it all. I think the mainstream press need to not get caught up in any information they find on a blog, an example of this is the Jeff Goldblum being dead incident. If the mainstream press are not careful and deliberate in verifying reports they get from blogs similar incidents will occur.

Author: Sky Croeser
Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 4:59:21 PM WST
Subject: RE: Official 2.1 “blogging” discussion thread: Rebecca Blood, Blogs and JournalismDo you think that it’s purely the costs (printing, paper, distribution, etc) that make offline sources more authoritative, as opposed to blogs that anyone can create for free? Or is it more complex than that?

That is a good question. I do not think the cost is the issue, more likely that offline sources like newspapers and others have large staff including researchers and the like. A blogger in most cases is likely to not have any staff to help confirm stories. This is just my opinion and I am sure there are exceptions to all rules.

Another thing I am not sure about is the legal issues that blogger’s have if they post a false story. Are they held to the same standards or code of practice as a traditional journalist.

 

---

 

Author: Sky Croeser
Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 4:30:42 PM WST
Subject: RE: Official 2.1 “blogging” discussion thread: Jill Walker Rettberg, networks, online communitiesOne possibility is that blogging will largely be replaced by ‘microblogging’, as longer blog posts give way to twitter and facebook status updates. Do you think this is a possibility, or are we too attached to expressing ourselves at length?

I would say that evolution of microblogging like most other new developments will be used more and more as a marketing/spamming tool until the next online evolution occurs. I feel that there will always be traditional blogging as it has become part of the mainstream communications online, microblogging is here to stay for now until then next craze comes along and the masses jump on board.

 

---

 

Author: Gwyneth Peaty
Date: Saturday, September 26, 2009 3:55:17 PM WST
Subject: Official 2.1 “blogging” discussion thread: Jill Walker Rettberg, networks, online communitiesRettberg talks about blogs facilitating
‘distributed conversations’ and even ‘distributed communities’;
what do you understand these terms to mean?- Have you ever been caught between
‘colliding networks’?

 

- What do you think about ‘publicly
articulated relationships’ online? How do they challenge/influence our
ways of interacting ‘offline’?

- More generally, what did you find most interesting in the Rettberg article?

 

Have you ever been caught between ‘colliding networks’?

Yes, there was a time when on facebook I had my mother and my step-mother both wanting to be on my friends list, well it was not a pleasant time and really made me want to never be a part of facebook again. The sad thing is it is only a website, it is not that important but it created some issues in my daily life.

More generally, what did you find most interesting in the Rettberg article?

I actually enjoyed reading this article, a couple interesting things happened during the read. The section on bullying was helpful for my mother as another source for her PhD, a very relevant topic for the youth of today.

Also I found that she used factual claims without citing the source, for example, “The more the sites that link to a blog, the higher Google will rank it in search results (Rettberg 2008, 66)”. Google’s ranking does not work like this, there are guidelines for higher ranking and in fact Google mention that excessive or bad linking will harm your site.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#2

and

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

Other than that little point I thought the article was very interesting and relevant to the essay coming up, I am sure there are some great points I can get from this.

NOTES

“A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.

Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.

In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what’s new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.”

Direct from Blogger.com, this explains well what exactly a Blog is.

Common Parts to a Blog…

• Comments
• RSS Feed
• Blogroll
• Permalinks

There are many differen kinds of Blogs.

• Personal
• Microblogs
• Photoblogs
• Corporate

Citizen Journalism is an important terms used with Blogs.

The blogosphere is a word used to combine all blogs into a bubble of sorts.