Social Media Commons^™

A Blogger's Blog: Exploring The Definition Of A Medium, Danah Boyd

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph of Introduction]

While blogging is piquing the interest of mainstream media, youth, academic researchers, and entrepreneurial Silicon Valley, only a fraction of Internet users read blogs and many do not even know what the term means. Reports on how many people read blogs vary (Rainie 2005, Comscore 2005), but even in the United States, less than 50% of Internet users read blogs and many do not even know when they do (Buchwalter 2005). Numerous tools have been built to support blogging and people have extended those tools to do a wide variety of things that may or may …

Thoughts On Blogging By A Poorly Masked Academic, Michael Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

My first attempt at blogging was the creation of Dialogic. I was working as an adjunct in 2004 at the University of Kentucky and developing original media literacy projects and assignments online. I had heard reports that universities might start claiming that course work developed on their servers would be technically the property of the university that owned the server. The precarious nature of adjunct life makes us susceptible to rumor, so I began to search for a new, cheap, relatively unmonitored forum to develop course work and to archive the wealth of information I was finding online. …

Blogademia, Craig Saper

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Academics, especially in the arts and humanities, have taken to blogs like ducks to water. At the same time, some of these blogs, especially those produced by graduate students and untenured faculty, have opened themselves to charges of wasting time gossiping about colleagues, and wallowing in unprofessional discourse, instead of working on serious scholarship. One blogger told me confidentially,

I just password-protected my blog for the period of my job search after reading this article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, I actually got in trouble with my senior colleagues last semester for making a posting about …

[Introduction:] Blogging And (Expatriate) Identity, Lauren Elkin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In Lettres parisiennes: Histoires d'exil, an exchange of letters on exile between francophone writers Nancy Huston and Leila Sebbah, Huston, a native of Alberta, Canada who moved to Paris in her early twenties, explains that she doesn't write in cafes because she would hate to be mistaken for the stereotypical "American in Paris": "one of those young women who I resemble a little too closely, with their blue, blue eyes and their bizarrely healthy skin, who you find sitting at café tables scribbling ostensibly in their diaries ("today: Mona Lisa") or filling out postcards ("Dear John, can you believe …

My Life In The Panopticon: Blogging From Iran, Esther Herman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The Panopticon is a prison that was developed in the 19th century. All of the cells face inward toward a tower. Guards sit in the tower where they can see everything that is happening within the cells. The prisoners cannot see the guards. They do not even know if a guard is in the tower or not. The prisoners feel watched whether they are being watched or not. As such, they internalize the notion of being watched and become their own guards.

Why I Blog: Part 1, Michael Benton (Compiler)

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Why I Blog: Part 2, Michael Benton (Compiler)

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Two Papers, Me In Between [External Link], Lilia Efimova

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

The Lo(N)G Revolution: The Blogosphere As An Alternative Public Sphere?, Anna Notaro

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It is a familiar argument that we are witnessing a period of major cultural and technological upheaval, yet this recognition is rarely related to a recognition of the long history of critical reflection on the nature of cultural and social change. One of the aims of this essay is to consider the most recent discussions over technology and its political impact in the light of the seminal arguments of Raymond Williams. In Television: Technology and Cultural Form. (1974) Williams writes:

Over a wide range from general television through commercial advertising to centralised information and data-processing systems, the technology …

Webfestschrift For Wealth Bondage [External Link], (Blog) The Happy Tutor

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

The Blogging Of Everyday Life, Tama Leaver

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Writing in the early 1980s, Michel de Certeau, one of the most influential theorists of 'the everyday', warned:

Marginality is today no longer limited to minority groups, but is rather massive and pervasive; this cultural activity of the non-producers of culture, an activity that is unsigned, unreadable, and unsymbolized, remains the only one possible for all those who nevertheless buy and pay for the showy products through which a productivist economy articulates itself. Marginality is becoming a universal. A marginal group has now become a silent majority.[1]

Throughout The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau argues for …

Internet Pr And New Gratifications In Sports: A New Way Of Communication Between Sports Organizations And Fans, Chang Wan Woo

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses content analysis, specifically thematic analysis, to investigate the message boards on Major League Baseball (MLB) teams' Web sites in order to 1) recognize in what ways sports teams' Internet message boards meet the unique gratifications of sports fans; and, 2) identify ways that sports PR practitioners can use Internet message boards for better (more gratifying) communication with sports fans. Thematic analysis of eight MLB teams' Web sites (the four with the highest winning percentages and the four with the lowest winning percentages) was conducted using Katz, Gurevitch, and Hass (1973) five gratifications categories and one additional "other" …

Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 And Its Implications For Libraries, Jack M. Maness

University Libraries: Faculty Scholarship

This article posits a definition and theory for "Library 2.0". It suggests that recent thinking describing the changing Web as "Web 2.0" will have substantial implications for libraries, and recognizes that while these implications keep very close to the history and mission of libraries, they still necessitate a new paradigm for librarianship. The paper applies the theory and definition to the practice of librarianship, specifically addressing how Web 2.0 technologies such as synchronous messaging and streaming media, blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging, RSS feeds, and mashups might intimate changes in how libraries provide access to their collections and user support …

New Innovations In State Legislatures: An Examination Of The Successes Of Diffusion And The Potential Of Personal Home Pages, Amber Jean Reetz Narro

Dissertations

This dissertation examined state legislators’ dissemination of innovations on their websites by determining the extent to which state legislators’ web sites reflect “best practices” as recommended by Park and Choi (2002) and Jewell (1982). The researcher utilizes content analysis to determine which legislators employ tools of sophistication, as well as relationship-building tools. In addition, the researcher interviewed webmasters across the country to determine the limitations placed on legislators. Finally, the researcher examined legislator and constituency demographics. Using chi-square analysis, the researcher determined if there were relationships between the tools on the websites and the demographics of the legislator and constituency …

Media Convergence And Virtual Communities: Current And Future Implications For Civic Inclusion, Lamees Magedy El Baghdady

Archived Theses and Dissertations

This thesis has a multi disciplinary approach. It integrates the study of virtual communities and media convergence research with a broader social milieu that is represented in two levels of research the micro level and the macro one. Among the significances of this thesis, is that it is considered to be the first academic investigation in the Arab World that tackles this theme of research.

Furthermore, the researcher triangulates both a quantitative and qualitative methods as the methodological framework for the thesis. The main research sample consists of 500 Egyptian youth, who are members of virtual communities.

Besides, while the …

Watching The Watchdog: Bloggers As The Fifth Estate, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

This author is inclined to think that social structures which evolve through the voluntary interactions and exchanges among people, such as the blogosphere, tend in general to be more beneficial than structures created through the deliberate exercise of power, however well-intentioned, such as regulatory bureaucracies. That idea cannot be fully explored here. For our purposes, we can simply note that the blogosphere would seem to be a near-perfect instantiation of the ideal discourse.

The "Data Slant": Why Lack Of Media Generated By Minority Users Online Is An Offline Problem, Laura R. Rochet

Maurer Student Articles

User-generated media, such as blogs, vlogs, and podcasts, are rapidly becoming an integral aspect of political and commercial discourse. However, the information derived from this media is fundamentally biased due to the disproportionately low amount of minority user-generated media on the Web. In order to correct what I term the “data slant,” politicians and commercial entities must seek information from minorities offline to supplement data derived from user-generated media online, or markedly increase investment in measures designed to bridge the digital divide—the primary source of the data slant problem. Failure to act will lead to the neglect of a significant …