Weblogs: March 2005 Archive Page

Imagine someone coping with real discrimination ? a black tanner, say, in 1897 Alabama. To expand his business, he needs capital and access to markets beyond the black business corridors in the south. Every white lender has turned him down, however, and no white merchant will carry his leather goods, even though they are superior to what is currently on the market. Tell that leather maker that an alternative universe exists, where he can obtain credit based solely on his financial history and sell his product based solely on its quality ? a universe where race is so irrelevant that no one will even know his own ? and he would think he had died and gone to heaven.

For allegedly discriminated-against minority and female writers, the web is just that heaven. --Heather Mac Donald --Diversity Mongers Target the Web (National Review)

Well, that assumes that the minority and female writers have equal access to the technology and skills that would prepare them for success on the internet. It also presumes they have equal access to the time it takes to build up a reputation that leads to paid work.

Mac Donald notes that women don't tend to write about politics as often as men, and that some minorities might not have the verbal skills that would enable them to make excellent writers; she also raises the spectre of quotas, which was probably unnecessary.

In 1999, I wrote about the conference in my first online journal, but since I composed entries under a pseudonym, I wrote in vague terms and ended up saying very little. Whenever I met another blogger, the encounter always felt somewhat clandestine; blogging was something we did in a back room and certainly not something we would talk about in mixed company. In 2005, however, bloggers kept their laptops open and wireless connections buzzing. Little was deemed unworthy of posting in cyberspace. --Nels P. Highberg --Blogging the C's (Across the Disciplines)

A good roundup of the blogging culture at the 4Cs. Highberg laments that it's becoming impossible to attend all the blogging-related sessions at the Cs. That's actually a good thing, since it means that plenty is happening.

Public, Private, Political: Social Theories and Blogging Practices (Jerz's CCCC 05 Notes)

The first panel I attended, Wednesday evening.

Lanette Cadle, Bowling Green State University, presented "Their Own Space: Adolescent Girls and the Personal Weblog."

"At Livejournal, girls rule."

67% are women, and the site features over 2 million active blogs. Yet women are under-represented in online research. Cynthia Gannet discusses the gender split between the historic concept of the journal and the diary. Cadle sees LiveJournal as a remediation of the traditionally feminine form of the diary.

Cadle referred to Bolter and Grusin's Remediation (which I've used as a textbook in my Media Aesthetics class.)

She referred to the tradition of passing around diaries at slumber parties, and suggested that accessing online journals (merely?) speeds up the socialization that paper diaries already enable.

She offered this taxonomy of diarist entries:

• Daily Log
• Vents and raves
• Links
• Comments
• Quizzes
• Memes
• Images

New to me: The "friends cut" -- a threat to drop someone from your "friends" list unless they post a comment. A quick way to find out who's actually reading your blog.

She studied the public, friends-only, and private entries from blogs written by girls 15 and 16. (During the Q & A I asked for more details about how she found these girls - they are all friends of her daughters, who mediated for her.)

She suggests that our students know about technology, but they may keep quiet. Case study: a young blogger who dislikes writing in school, doesn't get credit in school for the technical skills she's developed.

Students are developing a habit of writing, reflective habits,

Blogs enact "Women's ways of knowing."

Blogs accelerate the process of identity construction, while maintaining the fluidity of that identity.

***

Daisy Pignetti, University of South Florida, Tampa

"The Public (Blogo)Sphere: Civic Discourse and Grassroots Endeavors"

Since Cadle examined teen angst diaries, it seemed fitting that Pignetti examined political blogs - the intensely personal and the intensely political being the two kinds of blogs that the mainstream media typically examines.

Pignetti noted that the GWBush blogs have all rebranded themselves as GOP sites. This seems to short-circuit whatever grassroots push there was for Bush.

Meanwhile, the "Deaniacs" who were "desperate for change" have also adjusted their online activities.

According to Pignetti, this campaign more than any other achieved a sense of Habermas's public sphere.

She noted Joe Trippi's reason for using the internet "You had trust in strangers again."

The feeling among the Deaniacs is that blogging encourages us to try to walk in each other's shoes, which is an appealing notion for grassroots organizers.

Pignetti finds this attitude a bit idealistic for a blog used for political purposes. Nevertheless, the loose organization of the Dean campaign fits well with blogging.

She cited Dan Gillmor's assessment of the Deanblog is a "genuine community." The organization took huge risks, trusted people from the edges to run the campaign.

"So," Pignetti asked, "why didn't it work?" It's not egalitarian there (in the Bush camp), but they won. How can we start using technology to make it more democratic and a more egalitarian space?

Moving over to the Bush blog, Pignetti noted that the site doesn't permit interaction... not even in "grassroots" category. Nearly every post was signed with titles, Bush twins blog mostly listed their events, again prohibiting comments, with "posts that read a little bit more like press releases than a diary form."

The Bush sites feature no blogroll, no posts included links. A ZIP code search permitted Bush supporters to meet other supporters in their neighborhood, but the site itself did not facilitate (or record) such contacts.

Conclusion: If egalitarian discourse is more important, but the current winning model is more elitist... turn to Habermas to find out what we can use with this technology. (My eyes glazed over here… Habermas is on my "I really should read" list, but I confess it's not very high on that list.)

The political blog gets attention from the mainstream media...

Education is required, for journalists, bloggers, liberals and conservatives. Dean's campaign was a turning point, and in 2008 technology will be even more important, including blogs, but also including tech we don't know about now. This new technology will help blogs morph into something else, leading to new possibilities for personal reaction.

My thoughts:

While it's true that the Bush site doesn't feature a true blog, neither did the Kerry site. Just because the Bush campaign doesn't itself support grassroots activism doesn't mean that the conservative bloggers aren't finding other ways to use the power of the internet. (Consider Dan Rather.) And it wasn't Bush that defeated Dean, it was the Democrats, who nominated Kerry instead. I'd like to see these issues examined, should Pignetti expand her talk for future publication.

On her blog, I have followed Pignetti's interest in the Dean campaign, which she expresses both through scholarship and her own political activism.

In the classroom I strive to maintain a neutral pose on most issues, which sometimes infuriates my students since I won't give my opinion. I tell them that I do have political convictions, that I did vote, and that I think certain things are right and certain things are wrong. But I'm more interested in getting everyone in the class to think about alternatives, other ways of "knowing," and respectful conversations. I tell my students that it is impossible for a human being to be completely unbiased, but that if we are aware of our biases, and we make a conscious effort to account for them, then we can be fair. (At the very least, we'll be more aware of biased news coverage.)


***

Clancy Ratliff, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, "The Parental is Political: Gender, Punditry, and Weblogs."


Ratliff mentioned that the community norms of blogging are traceable to the norms that had formed around forums and other electronic spaces. But she suggested that blogs provide authors with a little more opportunity to talk with people who disagree with you. Discussion boards focused on feminism or environmentalism tend to have a homogenous community "with a little wiggle room" where debate might take place, but where radically opposed opinions aren't likely to be prominent.

By contrast, a blogger typically features a a blogroll may have links to people farther on the left than you and on the right... but a traditional e-forum would assume that someone voicing a different opinion is a troll.

Ratliff mentioned the recurring online meme, where are the women political bloggers? She observed that bloggers have found that "being sexy gets you readers," and referred to gendered terms such as link whore and link slut.

She suggested, without wholly embracing, a few ways that men and women are generally considered to differ: women are more reflective, men are more like pundits, making pronouncements. Because men use more violent images and more sports metaphors, they may tend to spark rebuttals more than women do.

Other reasons why there may be fewer female political pundits: women use pseudonyms more than men (thus they may be out there in the blogosphere, but because they aren't identifying themselves as females, they are uncountable).

Women aren't perceived as blogging about politics… but Ratliff mentioned a Bitch Ph.D. blog that made a political point through telling a story about a mother's encounter with rats. At first glance, it appears to be a personal anecdote, of the kind found on the "mommy blog," but it is political, even if it doesn't mention legislation or name names (as a more overtly political male blogger is presumably more likely to do).

(Incidentally, James Lileks has a habit of blends political punditry with personal material more closely associated with the feminine diaristic style of writing would probably be productive. He alternates between venom-dipped fisks and charming stories about his daughter "Gnat." Some of the writing he did right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks were extremely powerful rhetorical constructions that clearly resonated with scores of bloggers who linked to his work.)

This line was in my notes. I don't know what it means: "Hrring, Computer Mediated Communication" Was that supposed to be "hiring"? (Any ideas, Clancy?)

Ratlilff noted that in most online communication contexts, the minority gender conforms to the majority gender. Thus, she queried the stereotypes of the informative male and the interactive female.
Like Pignetti, Ratliff concluded with a gesture towards Habermas - but thankfully for me, went on to note that Habermas finds that the public political sphere emerges with the decline of the monarchy, and that competing private interests has led to the decline of the public sphere.

A few personal notes:

I've seen Clancy speak before, but this time I was struck by how clearly her rhetorical training influenced the delivery of her speech. She started off with a careful preview - what I call the "blueprint" - telling her audience she is about to say. I don't think I've ever heard her say "umm" or lose a thought in the middle of a sentence, which is something I fear I do far too often. During a brief period of time when carpal tunnel syndrome forced me to dictate my comments on student papers, I found that my classroom presentation style improved dramatically.

Last year, when I first met Clancy, after having interacted with her for a long time on KairosNews, she said that she expected me to be "a big burly lumberjack guy, with a full, thick beard," and attributed her expectation to my opinionated writing style. (Since then I've grown a beard, though I like keeping it trimmed.)

Brief Reflection on All Three Sessions
The private, the political, and gender in the SHU blogosphere

I'm increasingly seeing students who come to my classes with years of experience blogging in a social context. They sometimes struggle to learn the proper register for writing an academic blog, but so far all the students who have identified themselves as committed personal blogger have been able to develop the additional skill that enables them to write more professionally when necessary.

We have a blog for the College Republicans, but no opposing group has requested a blog. One student recently presented a liberal opinion, using a few rhetorical questions in his post, and including an attack on the Catholic church. When a few conservative bloggers responded with answers to those questions, he felt he was being attacked, and deleted their comments. A different student (whose opinions are moderate-to-liberal) gently pointed out that deleting opinions that you disagree with is missing the point of having a blog in the first place.

Most students at SHU, and most student bloggers at SHU, are women. The male bloggers who are the most active on the site include two professors and one student who has never taken one of my classes. Most of the "bloginators" (the committed bloggers who write far more than the syllabus requires) are women. On average, the men write fewer entries, but for some reason they attract a disproportionately higher number of comments per post.

A great panel, and a wonderful way to start off my CCCC experience.

Calling All Bloggers ? Friday Special Interest Group (Jerz's CCCC 05 Notes)

Friday evening's "Calling all Bloggers" special interest group, organized by Charles Lowe, was an energetic and productive hour.

I facilitated a breakout session on institutional blogging, where we discussed ways that blogs might be useful for building an instructional archive to be used by the dozens of writing instructors at Weber State U, or for a service-learning project at Western Kentucky U. We commiserated a bit about over our observation that, while some students take to blogging immediately, some students aren't sufficiently motivated to do any kind of work, regardless of format.

The time one spends trying to motivate the disinterested detracts from the time one can spend challenging the motivated, and since teachers are human and we don't like to feel our efforts are unappreciated or wasted, our natural tendency is to want to spend time with the motivated students.

I was pleased to find former National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) chair and accomplished blogger John Lovas was in attendance. In response to a subgroup's concerns about the role blogging could and should play in hiring, promotions, and tenure, Lovas suggested that we lobby the NCTE leadership to produce a statement that guides hiring and promotion committees in the assessment of blogs, wikis, and other developing modes of scholarly dissemination. This November, the NCTE meets in Pittsburgh, within commuting distance from Seton Hill.

Thinking on a very different scale, I suggested that educational bloggers start developing the habit of occasionally dropping by and posting comments on blogs written by the students of our colleagues. Students often report feeling very proud when they get their first comment, or their first comment from a stranger.

While I was fairly proud of my clever suggestion, Lowe's was even more brilliant. Yes, if we band together and help each other's students realize that they are being read, we can try a similar tactic to convince our non-blogging colleagues that blogs can be an important part of scholarly discourse. But he suggested that we start a habit of reviewing each other's blogs in journal articles. Tech-friendly journals such as Kairos and CCC Online are the natural places to start, but if more traditional journals start getting submissions in which scholars review blogs, at the very least we'll be putting the subject before the gatekeepers of our academic discourse.

Finally getting around to blogging some notes about sessions I've attended. I don't know if the overall quality of the conference has improved or if I just really know how to pick 'em, but all the sessions I've attended so far have been great. The first session I attended was "Evaluating Academic Weblogs: Using Empirical Data to Assess Pedagogy and Student Achievement." -- Clancy Ratliff --CCCC, Day 1, Session 1 (CultureCat)

Clancy Ratliff posted a generous and thoughful summary of the session I chaired. Rather than post my own notes, I thought I'd just link to hers. (I've got detailed notes from your session, Clancy... I'll post them as soon as I get the chance.)

Since blogs became the next big thing, an increasing number of companies have come to see them as the next great public relations vehicle -- a way for executives to demonstrate their casual, interactive side.

But, of course, the executives do nothing of the sort. Their attempts at hip, guerrilla-style blogging are often pained -- and painful. --Amy Joyce --More pr than no-holds-barred on bosses' corporate blogs (Detroit News)

I gave a talk on exactly this theme to a group of local university PR professionals, earlier this month.

A Blogger Went to CCCC... And Here's What He Did CCCC (Jerz's CCCC 05 Notes)

The challenging acoustics in the Moscone Center seemed to work in Douglas Dean Hesse’s favor, as he opened his keynote, “Who Owns Writing?” by belting out an African-American spiritual.

During the opening session, when Sharon Mitchler asked attendees who are affiliated with two-year colleges to stand, about a quarter of the room did so. Many were wearing ribbons on their nametags identifying themselves. Interesting facts: 11 million students in 2-year college, and half of all composition students are in two-year colleges. I was motivated to find out more about a breakfast Saturday morning, in which the “Fame and Shame” awards will be given out for the best and worst media references to two-year colleges. (When I learned that the breakfast cost $20, my enthusiasm faded somewhat… I’m flying out Saturday morning, so I’m not sure whether I want to pay that much money to add another item to the last day of my schedule).

I was fortunate that my session Thursday morning was held in a mid-sized room with proper walls, as was the blogging session I attended Wednesday night.

One of the presenters from Wednesday’s night’s blogging session was among a group of young minority scholars honored with a travel grant during the opening session. Blogger and Florida State U University of South Florida graduate student Daisy Pignetti is studying how presidential candidates, especially Howard Dean, used weblogs in the lead-up to the 2004 election. I’m a regular visitor to her blog.

Is the role of “Digital Troubleshooter” new at the 4Cs? Maybe I just noticed it this time because two people I know were walking around with ribbons attached to their badges. The geek in me wanted such a ribbon, so I could wander heroically from session to session, sowing order and technological harmony in my wake.

Thursday afternoon’s “Writing Multimodalities within Literacy and ‘Electracy’: A Conversation with Gregory Ulmer” took place in a huge ballroom room with a vaulted ceiling, divided with a flimsy curtain maybe eight feet high. This meant that the very audible speaker on the other side of the curtain was also having an unplanned conversation with Gregory Ulmer. Both were using microphones, and both stepped closer to the mic and spoke up in order to be heard. Briefly the speakers even fell into a rhythm, one speaking while the other paused, creating a kind of Dueling Banjos effect. Amusingly disorienting, but impossible for me to process. Since the session was being recorded for a future podcast, I decided to duck out.

When I checked my e-mail, I found my academic blogging site had been hit with 300 comment spasm in the last 24 hours.

I was headed to a session in which Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher were scheduled to speak on digital literacy, when I ran into an old friend with whom I had a long, overdue, and much-welcomed conversation. I’m sorry I missed the session, but glad I caught up with a friend.

I brought a half-inch stack of business cards, and they’re almost all gone. I wish I’d brought more.

I spotted Lawrence Lessig sitting alone in front of the room where he was scheduled to speak on “Is Writing Allowed?” Andrea Lunsford was to introduce him, but there Lessig was, sitting rather glumly. After 15 minutes or so, I asked myself, if I call myself a geek (and I do), then why am I just sitting here, while Lawrence Lessig is sitting there twiddling his thumbs and actively scanning the audience, almost as if he were seeking a little human contact?

When I approached to say hello, he did the “extending hand in greeting in such a way as not to prevent an involuntary furtive glance at the nametag” thing. I started off with something really eloquent and memorable, like “Um… I’m a blogger? And so, uh, I really like your work?” I have no idea how those question marks got into my voice, but there they were. When I told him that I had just seen Lunsford a half hour ago, and that she mentioned she was going to introduce this session, he seemed relieved that he wasn’t forgotten. Just then Lunsford herself showed up, so all was well.

I’m still at the conference as I write this. I'll post more about Lessig, and also Hesse and some of the other presentations, as I can find the time over the next few days.

Our students, especially the ones who are required to be in our classes and are, therefore, required to blog or do whatever else we ask of them, are generally going to be concerned about the grade they get - possibly even more concerned about the grade than about what they learn. --Nancy McKeand --Evaluating Blogging (Random Thoughts)

Nancy is reponding to a comment I left on her earlier post, "Blogging is like an avocado."

Blogging clearly isn?t going to help that proportion of people who aren?t really up to their job, or who are prone to inarticulate flaming, or both. But then, those people tend to have career problems anyhow. Put it another way: not blogging won?t protect you from career-limiting moves, and if blogging provokes one, well, you were probably going to do it anyhow.

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.

2. You have to get noticed to get hired.

3. It really impresses people when you say ?Oh, I?ve written about that, just google for XXX and I?m on the top page? or ?Oh, just google my name.?

4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.

5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.

6. Knowing more also means you?re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.

7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.

8. If you?re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.

9. If you?re in marketing, you?ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.

10. It?s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

    --Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career (Ongoing)

Oh blog, me, babe! Don't miss a word of it!
Many a blog has brought love to my door
Netted by sparkling poem, or flash of wit -
The chatroom kind, of course, and little more.
What need of tangled flesh on messy dates
The weight of expectation as it starts
Its gentle journey southwards, then abates?
The strain of those repeated broken hearts?
Love's old economy is gone for good
Desire is met through ethernet, our span
Is all the world by cable, though we should
Still try to be as sticky as we can.

But now I'm worried if your e-mail spells:
You only want me for my URLs? --Rebecca MacKinnon --You only want me for my URLs? (Weblogs at Harvard Law)

Fun, silly stuff. My Intro to English Lit class will be writing a sonnet in a little while, so I'm saving this for later.

Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst at the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said employees often "don't realize the First Amendment doesn't protect their job."

The First Amendment only restricts government control of speech. So private employers are free to fire at will in most states, as long as it's not discriminatory or in retaliation for whistle-blowing or union organizing, labor experts say.

A few companies actually do encourage personal, unofficial blogs and have policies defining do's and don'ts for employees who post online. They recognize that there can be value in engaging customers through thoughtful blogs.

"There's always a risk, but you always have that risk anytime you put an employee on the phone," Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said. --Anick Jesdanun --Firms Taking Action Against Worker Blogs (AP/My Way)

The telephone quotation puts the issue into the proper context, but that headline is a bit alarmist. Bosses and other authorities can clamp down on disrespect without silencing dissent.

At SHU, most students treat their academic weblogs as just another kind of homework, but others blog far beyond what the syllabus requires, even when classes are not in session. They do so for the same widely varying reasons that people blog everywhere else.

It's Spring Break now, and Lou asks for encouragement as he hunkers down to write a romance, Moira marvels that she's spending her break chortling through a required book on punctuation and grammar, Amanda and Karissa take the time to warn their readers that they'll be away from a computer during most of the break. I can also tell from the server logs when a particular URL is being passed around via e-mail and IM.

For some students, the blogs mean something more than just the place where Jerz wants them to post homework. After the server that hosts our blogs was attacked a few weeks ago, and I had to take the blogs down for a while, student Mike Rubio wrote in a column in the school paper, "these recent attacks have caused most of us (or at least the few of us who adore the art of blogging) to realize how much we miss them now that they are gone. | I am hoping that Jerz will nominate a head of Blog-land Security to oversee the protection of our Moveable Type-fueled freedom." In fact, some students get so attached to their SHU blogs that they resent blogging homework, and struggle to find an aesthetically pleasing way to integrate their academic voice with their personal one. (I've posted about the forced blogging paradigm before.)

There are already laws about copyright infringement, libel, defamation of character, and so forth. There's nothing that's illegal to do in blogs but legal in other media, or vice versa. A student who disrupts a class meeting or says something hateful in the cafeteria has committed an act that exists at one point in time. An employee who posts offensive signs around campus has put them in one particular place, from which they can be removed should they be deemed inappropriate. In such cases, the harm is easily confined. But a blog that contains inappropriate content continues to communicate it to each new web visitor.

There's certainly nothing new about student blogs - there are millions of them floating in cyberspace. What separates these online journals from the rest of the pack is that they are university sponsored and featured prominently on a school's admissions pages. These journals are photo heavy and focus on a few events every few weeks. But one has to ask - how real are these journals? And are they simply mouthpieces for the school?

"A kid who is going to see this diary is going to approach it with a healthy skepticism," says Paul Marthers, dean of admissions at Reed College in Portland, Ore., who is still weighing the pros and cons of a school-sponsored online journal. Some of the difficulties, says Mr. Marthers, are choosing the right people to represent the school, deciding whether or not the diaries are a passing fad, and whether prospective students are going to assume freshmen were "coached" on what to write. --Lisa Leigh Connors --Diary of a college freshman: now accessible online (CS Monitor)

Thanks for the link, Mike.