Blogging as Global Media

http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/files/publicsphere/Duncan%20Blog%20pic.jpg

To begin with, I found the task of writing a blog, about blogging, quite perplexing.

I had never really thought about the various uses for blogs and how important they can be.
Sure, I've heard of people who have become famous from their blogs, but they're usually quite quirky and different. 

It was through this study of blogs that I came to understand the full variety of uses for every day citizens, students, and even for  the tracking and mapping of media stories.

http://adfi.usq.edu.au/starlog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/blogmap2.jpg

I had never thought of blogging as a form of 'self directed learning' (Robertson, 2011) until this week. The idea that students, such as myself, given the task of blogging, which includes planning, evaluating, and re-evaluating, are "learning how to learn" (Robertson, 2011). As university students it is important to develop independence and thinking skills in order to be able to cope with future studies, and this is what blogging emphasises, with a supportive audience to share ideas with. It also opens the possibility of coming into contact with other viewpoints other than the dominant media, which I believe is crucial in developing critical thinking skills as not just a student, but as a consumer and a citizen. 

The use of blogs is also common among employees who express 'employee cynicism' (Richards & Kosmala, 2013). They use this "work blogging" as a platform to vent things that they could not ordinarily say at work, for fear of being seen as a "whinger" and it is the only place they can go to when they are fed up with management. The use of a blog offers them a voice. Although still dedicated employees, the use of a blog gives them a sense of power and control against the corporate culture initiatives (Richards & Kosmala, 2013).

There have been a number of studies which have attempted to map the Australian blogosphere and how information is spread from blog to blog (Bruns, et al 2011). It became apparent that bloggers with interest in Australian politics were consistently addressing current affairs (Bruns, et al 2011). As noted in the video below, it can take newspapers days or weeks to print a story, but blogs are instantaneous; A constant supply of new information from a variety of sources. There has been a significant change in the way that we choose to communicate in our every day lives, and this is represented in the expansion of social media platforms, such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter (Bruns, et al 2011). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCY2ZKrsUuE

Resources;

Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Highfield, T., and Nicolai, T. 2011 ‘Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere’, Social Science Computer Review, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 277-287.

Richards, J., and Kosmala, K., 2013 ‘In the end, you can only slag people off for so long’: employee cynicism through work blogging’, New Technology, Work and Employment, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 68 – 77.

 Robertson, J. 2011 ‘The educational affordances of blog for self-directed learning’, Computers and Education, vol. 57, pp. 1628 – 1644.