Personal Blogging
This entry was written in response to the Research Blogging Assignment for Stanford's Fall 2008 Cultural Interfaces class. For more about this assignment, click here. You can leave a comment on this post by clicking on the "comment" link below.
My project deals with exploring the realm of personal blogs. I am hoping to find people’s reasoning for posting diaries online for faceless strangers to read, as well as the allure of reading these posts.
I decided that the best way to research this topic is to explore multiple personal blogs, instead of focusing on academic research. With this method of research, I have created my own classifications of personal blogs, identifying the intended purpose of the blog through the writer’s rhetoric and recurring themes. For example, I have found that some personal diary blogs seem to act as a kind of therapy for the writer. Why they post it online instead of saving files to their computer or writing in a more traditional diary I have not yet determined. Perhaps the reasoning is simply the influence of technology. On the other hand there are personal diary blogs that seem to be seeking attention. The recurring pathos in these blogs is the first sign, along with encouragement for feedback and continued attempts at wit and humor. Other types of personal blogs include philosophical reflection, and what I classify as a “play-by-play” blog: a person who updates their blog constantly with minute details of their day, to the point where the postings seem obsessive compulsive.
I am planning on tracking 5 blogs within in each of my classifications. I will then be able to compare similar blogs with each other, as well as cross-analyze the blogs for differences in themes, rhetoric, and purpose. Ultimately I hope to be able to comment on the rationality surrounding personal diary blogs, and identify the motives behind the different categories of these bloggers.
The best part of this project is the entertainment. Each day I follow along with a stranger’s life, and quite often their life is silly, preposterous, ridiculous, or just fun to follow. Here are a few examples:
“The Gay Banker”- A homosexual investment banker in London, detailing the drama of his love life. http://gaybanker.blogspot.com/
“Tumadora”- A borderline play-by-play blogger, whose posts have no real value other than that she seems to enjoy rambling about senseless occurrences in her life. http://tumadora.info/?cat=3
Comments
Dear Chris,
your project sounds great and as you said highly entertaining from your point of view! It will be very interesting to see your findings in terms of how the language bloggers use differ with regards to their purpose. What exactly are your categories for classification?
Patrizia from Sydney University
Posted by: patrizia | October 22, 2008 05:22 PM
Hi Chris,
Steph from University of Sydney here.
Blogs are a goldmine for getting candid access to the technological socialisation of people from all over the world.
I recently did an assignment focusing on the components of gender and sexuality for the Gay Banker, looking at some Foucauldian perspectives on gay culture, the "gay way of life" specifically. Not sure whether that is of interest, but those Foucauldian ideas had some great interactions with the Gay Banker blog.
As Patrizia said, it's really helpful to focus on the type of language used in the blogs as well and, as you've recognised, also good to focus on the purpose of the blog, or intended audience. Is this a purely entertaining diatribe of day-to-day existence? Is it developing a personal philosophy that the blogger aims to share with the world? Is this a method of confession that is a contemporary process of self-healing and self-revealing?
What is wonderful to consider too is that people (like you and I) actually spend a lot of time reading this, for information and entertainment's sake.
The accepted practices of voyeurism, of secretively tracking the banalities of a complete stranger, this is absolutely striking. A fascinating component of technological socialisation, where you can stay completely silent in your observations, or interact directly through comments and conversations.
You have probably noticed some of the comments and interactions from the Gay Banker - often leading to more than just a friendly banter online... GB also has a strict policy on interacting with his readers, developing a formalised boundary system between the blogger and reader. This process of formalisation is also fascinating - the blog form developing its own rules and practices from originally being an informal and improvised system of interaction.
Hope my rant was slightly helpful! Good luck with your assignment!
Cheers
Steph
Posted by: Steph Iredale | October 22, 2008 05:38 PM