Beginnings

Jill Walker (jill/txt.. Weblog) and Torill Mortensen (Thinking with my fingers. Weblog) used a blog (blogonblog. Weblog) in the process of researching and writing the article ‘Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool’. (Mortensen & Walker). The following extract from this article is the catalyst for my final assignment for Networked Media and informs my decision to present my ‘essay’ as a Weblog.

Weblogs are densely interlinked. This anchors blogs in the public arena, as part of a communal discourse. Posts to a blog can be very short and unpretentious. The threshold for publishing a single post is very low. This allows single, small, insignificant ideas to be expressed and formulated. Sometimes these thoughts are left as they are. A paragraph is enough and there is no more needed. Other times, the ideas grow. Someone links their site to the first post, comments on it, and a conversation grows forth. The initial post, or follow-ups, are linked to a web site or a newspaper article or something else. Links are like roots, tendrils, reaching out between fragments, creating a context for bits and pieces that at first glance may seem to be unconnected fragments.

Mortensen and Walker. p259

So what is blogging?. Evan Williams, co-creator of the blogging tool Blogger, defines the blog concept as: ‘Frequency, Bevity, and Personality’ (Turnbull). The word ‘Blog ‘was coined by Peter Mierholz in 1999 – the same year that the genre began a ‘speedy growth’ (Mortensen & Walker 254). Rebecca Blood wrote “Weblogs: a history and perspective.” Rebecca’s Pocket. 9/7/2000, an acclaimed article on the history of blogs in 2000, while the first academic article on weblogs, ‘Blog this: digital renaissance’ Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and Their Impact. Cambridge, MA: MIT. February 2002,was published by Henry Jenkins.

I’ve written research journals for other academic assignments; laboriously mapping my research design and using that information to formulate the outcome (be it a report, essay etc). I discovered that the ideas these journals explored were often more illuminating (for showing my random thoughts) rather than as an broad outline of the project outcome. My lecturers read these seminal ideas, but only as background notes to the main project. What if those ideas could be kept somewhere public?

Could these ‘fragments’ provide the reader with more insight into my work; contextualise my findings in relation to each other, or even provide links to assist someone in their own research or interests? How refreshing it was to read Mortensen & Walker, “in our blogs, we allow ourselves to write half-thought, naked ideas and show them to others rather than saving them for fully fleshed out carefully thought through papers (Mortensen & Walker 267).

Blogging is a new genre that needs a new approach. With Williams’ blogging definition in mind and my own head swimming with ‘naked ideas’, I’m adapting my critical thinking, writing and researching methodologies to experiment with ‘blog think’ – not whipping my ideas into shape for a final product, but seeing how the seemingly unconnected ‘fragments’ might coalesce as product in my blog.

Blogging, dispenses with the dichotomy between thought and action, due to its positioning on the border of what’s private and what’s public (Mortensen & Walker 256). They offer the chance to turn an internal monologue into a dynamic dialogue, where ideas change and develop throughout the process. My research, the initial goals and the project itself are all interconnected and equally weighted.

The shaping of the final outcome of the project is dependent on the context in which it is written. This assignment gives me a useful perspective on my academic work – the project as I move through it.

My leitmotif is: ‘Blogs are a way to trace the flight of thought rather than the chain of thought’ (Mortensen & Walker 268). The keyboard is my pen; the weblog my blank piece of paper. Let’s see what I discover…