Corpus
Tuesday, January 31
8:55 PM
Here are the blogs I'll be studying:
2004-2005 entries
Dooce
2004 entries
Real E Fun
Tequila Mockingbird
Greek Tragedy
Londonmark
2005 entries
Mimi in New York
Finslippy
These two blogs were also nominated this year, and frankly they're messing up my whole "predefined category" conceit by forcing me to narrow the field to the "ostensibly autobiographical." Obvious, yes, but I'm trying to avoid being arbitrary:
Go Fug Yourself
Said the Gramophone
Thoughts so far? I'd always thought Dooce sucked, but in reality, Dooce is pretty entertaining reading — no wonder it's the web's most popular single-author personal weblog. (I'm still a bit leery of the term "lifelog.")
But you know who does suck? Mimi. I do not look forward to spending more time with that particular writing voice, nor do I think I would enjoy spending more than three seconds with the girl behind the blog.
Comments (2)
I suggest you don't then! I'm not holding a gun to your head kid.
And yet I still blame you, if only for being so popular with the voters.
Thesis intro 5:52 PM I've been doing a lot of writing for my project lately. For Monday I had to turn in a revised proposal as well as an intro and a 3-4 page excerpt. Lots of work still to do on those: my number one priority right now is familiarizing myself with the corpus so I can write with more (genuine) authority.
Unfortunarely, I left the disk with my sample pages in the lounge. Here's the intro:
Since the mid-nineties, the medium that would eventually come to be known as the "weblog" or "blog" has become increasingly prominent. As of November 2004, more than 8 million Americans had created weblogs, and twenty-seven percent of American Internet users, roughly 32 million people, claimed to be blog readers. Coinciding with their increased popularity, weblogs have also diversified into an increasing number of genres, which theorists have classified in a number of — for the most part — arbitrarily determined ways. Despite persistent disagreement as to the proper way to classify blog types, every study of the "blogosphere" has invariably found the ostensibly autobiographical, diary-style webpage to be by far the most common form of weblog. The goal of this paper is first, to analyze the seven autobiographical blogs which voters chose as finalists for the "best writing of a weblog" Weblog Awards category in order to determine commonalities which might justify grouping them together into a single, diary-weblog genre, and then second, to examine the narrative aspects of these weblogs to determine the "expectations, motivations, and terms of success" within that genre.
Thesis proposal (revised) Monday, January 30 10:34 AM Narrative and rhetorical success on diary weblogs
There is little — short of the label itself — connecting the millions of weblogs. Walker's short definition of the blog as "a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first" describes most (successful) instances of the weblog, but as with most definitions of "blog," it's clear that several genres have been grouped together under the same term. In response, theorists have attempted to classify blogs into categories, starting from a basic diary-focused vs. link-focused distinction and working their way toward more complicated taxonomies. Every blogosphere survey, relying on its own "commonsense" definition of blogging genres, invariably discovers that diary weblogs are by far the most common form of weblog, and with few exceptions, the study of these weblogs has remained at the statistical level.
In contrast to this statistical approach, Miller and Shepherd call for a rhetorical approach, one "more interested in expectations, motivations, and terms of success." While such an approach is common, theorists usually focus on a few novel blogs or some abstracted "ideal" blog — emphasizing obvious elements, such as hypertext links, to separate blogs from ancestors like the diary or the epistolary novel. This mode of analysis is useful, but generalizing about blogs is risky given the many genres available, and authors are sometimes tempted to create normative definitions which exclude many websites generally considered blogs, as when Jill Walker refuses the term to weblogs without links. In most cases, weblogs are too different to analyze as a group without implicitly privileging a certain genre.
As noted above, diary weblogs have yet to be subjected to a genre-specific rhetorical analysis, nor have the boundaries of their genre been defined in any systematic way. Unlike the link-based blogs so often studied, these "lifelogs" succeed within their genre largely on the basis of their post content — it should come as no surprise that nearly all of the finalists for the "best writing of a weblog" Weblog Awards category seem to come from this genre. It's these blogs which I propose to study, analyzing those aspects of their writing which mark them as especially successful instances of a lifelog genre. With an eye toward Wayne Booth's idea of the "implied author," I'll pay special attention to the way all of these bloggers position themselves as compelling subjects in their ostensibly autobiographical entries. Ultimately, I plan to find out how much rhetorical unity there is among the best-written weblogs in the hope of understanding not only them, but also the genre they purportedly represent.
Thesis Proposal (first edition) 2:04 AM Here's the proposal I presented to the class a few weeks ago. I'm currently working on a revised draft, but since I've only had an advisor since Wednesday there's not much to add.
Narrative and rhetorical success on the "lifelog"
There is little — short of the label itself — connecting the millions of weblogs. Walker's short definition of the blog as "a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first" describes most (successful) instances of the weblog, but as with most definitions of "blog," it's clear that several genres have been grouped together under the same term. In response, theorists have attempted to classified blogs into categories, starting from a basic (and as many concede, problematic) diary-focused vs. link-focused distinction and working their way toward more complicated taxonomies. Every blogosphere survey invariably discovers that diary weblogs are by far the most common form of weblog, and yet, with few exceptions, the study of these weblogs has remained at the statistical level.
In contrast to this statistical approach, Miller and Shepherd call for a rhetorical approach, one "more interested in expectations, motivations, and terms of success" within a genre. While such an approach is common, perhaps even dominant among blog theorists, they usually focus on a few novel blogs or some abstracted "ideal" blog — emphasizing obvious elements, such as hypertext links, to separate blogs from ancestors like the diary or the epistolary novel. This mode of analysis is useful, but generalizing about blogs is risky given the many genres available, and authors are sometimes tempted to create normative definitions which exclude many websites generally considered blogs, as when Walker refuses the term to weblogs without links. In most cases, weblogs are too different to analyze as a group without implicitly privileging a certain genre.
As noted above, diary weblogs have yet to be subjected to a genre-specific rhetorical analysis. Unlike the link-based blogs so often studied, these "lifelogs" succeed within their genre largely on the basis of their post content — it should come as no surprise that the finalists for the "best writing of a weblog" Weblog Awards category come exclusively from this genre. It's these blogs which I propose to study, in the hope of determining what marks them as especially successful instances of the diary-weblog genre. With an eye toward Weez's definition of the blog as "first-person narrative in real time," I'll pay special attention to the way all of these bloggers position themselves as compelling subjects. Ultimately, I plan to find out how much rhetorical unity there is among the best-written weblogs in the hope of understanding not only them, but also the genre they purportedly represent.
Sociology of the Technorati 100 Sunday, January 22 3:08 AM (X-posted to Dan's Webpage)
So I finished my sociology essay. Granted, it took about a month longer than I wanted it to but... well, now I'm done, and with the possible exception of my "blogs can be camp" essay, I'm reasonably proud of my work.
My main essay was an attempt to correlate the geographic distribution of the Technorati 100 (as of November 25, 2005 — the list is surprisingly fluid) with the rankings used in the Metropolitan New Economy Index, some diversity and tolerance indices devised by Florida and Gates (pdf), and basic variables like education and population.
Here are the three main pieces of this project:
Demography of the Technorati 100 essay.
Data collected on Technorati 100 bloggers. I expect there are one or two mistakes in the data here, from outdated articles or posts, but there was little to no guesswork.
Data collected on cities. How many Technorati 100 blogs they have, index ratings, etc. New York is easily the nation's blog capital, Chicago is the most under-represented city.
Speaking of all-consuming projects, I can't wait to plunge back into my research project. Next week is all about wooing a possible advisor.
Granted, it would be nice to know what the other half of my corpus is going to be (I'm studying the "best writing of a weblog" bloggers, more on that later I'm sure), but apparently the Bloggies guy couldn't manage to do 150 screen captures (or is it only 30?) over the course of four days. That's his excuse, anyways.
The finalists list is two days late at this point and I'm left checking the site compusively. I suppose I can always catch up on four days worth of news instead.
Pre-grind tech stuff Sunday, January 8 12:44 PM Trying to add this page to my Technorati Profile. Updates should resume later this week.
Alles Wird Gut
