A couple of months ago, I was asked by the editor of Nexus, the Newsletter of the Australian Sociological Association to do a piece on blogging. I asked whether what was wanted was the sociology of blogs or the sociology of blogging. As it transpired, I wrote up the former.
But I don’t think there’s any Australian research on stuff like why people blog, what they get out of it, whether it has any spinoffs for them professionally and so on.
I’d like to do a survey on that, with a view to writing up the results for an academic journal article. If interested, please leave a comment or email me at m dot bahnisch at griffith dot edu dot au
If it extends to mere commentors like me, Mark, I’m in - in the name of science etc.
Hadn’t thought of that, Lefty E, but it’d be good also to get some data on readers and commenters’ motivations etc.
Cheers!
Mark, did you see the article Brownie sent around a while ago by a guy from Bond? It was focussing on politics, and the poor guy obviously didn’t know much about blogs.
Nope! What was it about, Zoe?
Mark — I first took up reading blogs because of an Honours thesis that came my way to examine, not from a politics or sociology department but from *adjusts garlic round neck, polishes silver bullet* an English department; the student did a brilliant, sophisticated study of ‘infertility’ blogs using a combination of several kinds of social and cultural theory. If I can find her email address I’ll send it on.
I’ll dig it up - it was that tired old whether blogs are influential on big time politics schtick.
Actually, that would also be quite an interesting question:
Why do people start reading blogs and why do they start their own?
Of course, the one that you are actually looking into has far more scope for research and analysis, etc. The other one would just be anecdotally interesting.
Thanks, Pavlov’s Cat - sounds interesting.
I did it so I could one day say I got 5000 hits from the Joss Whedon fan site.
Ahem.
Very interesting sounding stuff. I’m happy to wax lyrical about online communities and feminism of you want, Mark.
Nexus is an unfortunate name for a serious publication. Its also the name of a tin-foil hat conspiracy rag.
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/ - it’s Australian too.
For some of us blogging is the next tech-step along from USENet newsgroups and mailing lists where we’ve been interacting online for years, so a look at some of the work that’s been done on the sociology of online forums since the days of ARPANet would probably be edifying.
The difference sociologically between the agora of the newsgroup, the clubhouse of the mailing list, and the salon of the blog sounds like a fertile area to examine.
Like Tigtog, I came from the USEnet/discussion forum background, but I was looking for some way in which I could learn to write. Was thinking about doing a course or joining a group or something. Serendipitously, I found blogs.
Those who look at blogs as a potential political force, and those who criticise them as simply navel gazing / ego tripping / blather ignore the fact that for some people, blogs are a way to learn to write, and to write for the reader. Those who pooh-pooh the blogosphere might consider the fact that in the ’sphere, where everything is for free and there are literally millions of blogs to choose from, the reader - consumer - has no reason to choose one blog over another except for the content it has. Blogs with poor content - be it poor writing or excessive navel gazing - will fail.
So, there’s a sense of challenge, to write as well as possible, and to ask oneself “if I was the reader would I want to read this? or is it just waffle?” It’s very valuable for the blogger,I think.
And there’s the contingent of (mostly) women stuck at home with small children and a craving to talk to some grown ups.
Lots of us have done the “why I blog” post too - Georg did a particularly excellent one at Psephite. Mine’s at http://crazybrave.blogspot.com/2005/02/i-am-blogger-hear-me-roar.html (and Mark, although it says there are no comments, just hit the thingy as usual - some interesting things in there)
Yes, I have noticed that a lot of bloggers tend to work from home - be that as carers, researchers, students or freelance writers, etc. A big element for me is the desire to have some kind of interaction during the day.
Happy to participate too
Nexus is, indeed, an unfortunate name.
Mark, this is not quite a ‘Sociologically of Blogging’ topic, but since the last ‘Literature’ thread is quite a way back, I hope you don’t mind me using this one temporarily. Please delete/move this if you think it’s/(not) an interesting idea. (I’ll donate $20 to LP whatever the case – only, er, how can I do so - your donate button won’t seem to let me use VISA???) Thanks a lot for the space, even if only temporary.
Ahem.
A recent thread on LP exploring literary categorisation made me wonder more, not less, about the difference between ‘genre’ and ‘literary’ fiction, or, as a few LP-ers implicitly referred to that supposed dichotomy: ‘good’ v. ‘bad’ writing. In fact it quickly became clear that most agree that things are not parsed this way at all - that while there is such a thing as ‘good’ writing and ‘bad’ writing, there is also such a thing as ‘good bad writing’ and ‘bad good writing’.
Great, then.
Having failed at my latest attempt to write a good ‘good’ novel – congrats to William Elliot, by the way, the jammy over-rated Johnny-come-lately judge-blowing taxpayer-leeching little bastard scumbag arsenobber of a literary
loserwinner - I am still pretty much in the dark about ‘good’ writing. So, entirely uninvited and eminently ignorable, I am hoping to enlist this blogsite in the service of making the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ writing clearer.Here’s the challenge…odd and presumptuous but one which might also amuse a few regular contributors/readers, and leave us all a bit clearer about the qualitative nature of literature. More than happy for anyone to amend or fine tune it to make it more useful and accessible.
The Literary Information:
John Smythe’s wife Jane is three months pregnant. John has just learned that she and his Best Man David Jones have been having an affair. John enters a sex club where he knows David is drinking, approaches him at the bar and stabs him in the throat with a sharp object.
The Literary Challenge:
In no more than 1000 words (normal /- 10% limits apply, tho’ the fewer the ‘better’, if Bellow is to be believed?) convey all this narrative information in a piece of fiction prose of any stated style, category, genre, etc. (You may set this basic narrative/character information within any broader assumed or implied additional narrative/characterisations you like).
Your piece can be as ‘good’ a piece of writing as you can manage or as ‘bad’ a piece of writing as you can manage – both judged according to the criteria of your chosen style/genre/category. You should nominate whether your piece is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ attempt; if you’re bored and have lots of blogging time, you may even enter both a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ entry in the same category/style/genre. Whatever, you should be prepared to ‘theorise’ about why your specific example is ‘good’/’bad’ as the discussion ensues. This may include explaining what you think the good/bad criteria for your chosen categories/etc are in the first place. Discussion in the thread can thence explore the ‘whys’ of ‘good’ writing and ‘bad’ writing examples on a ‘level playing field’ – that is, using the internal conventions/demands of each prose vehicle as its own set of ‘good/’bad’ benchmarks (rather than trying to qualitatively square off Tim Winton and Stephen King, etc)…all while demanding of us would-be fiction writers a collective, qualitative discussion of ‘good’ v. ‘bad’ literature as per usual (yawn)…BUT using concrete examples we provide, thus putting our own words where our big mouths are.
The Literary Rules: (LP, modify if/as required)
1. Participants should preferably write under their regular LP names, or at least declare if they are regular LP-ers writing (out of shyness, tactics, professional reasons, etc) under a pseudonym. First-time posters are also encouraged.
2. As ‘good’ a piece of writing should be just that - the best the contributor can manage - no self-protective irony or artificial cynicism allowed here, unless that is an inherent part of your chosen entry (ie you’re writing a McSweeneyesque riff).
3. RWDB LP-ers who routinely bemoan the crap-ness of post-Whitlam Australian literature are heartily encouraged to enter, in order to show us incestuous latte-lefties and Australia Council titty-suckers just what we’ve been doing wrong for so long. Show, that is, not tell.
4. There will be no winners, for as a thoughtful aspiring Australian writer of serious fiction I firmly believe that competition in all its human forms is gravely damaging to what remains throughout the Seven Ages of woMankind the fundamentally naïve person-child huddling, foetus-like, within us all; o yay, sweet child Man, gentle and all-wise, vulnerable and frightened, as, lonely, you swim your lone path through the lonesome cosmos-void, lonely and alone. To abandon that miraculous fragility to the raw-boned coarseness of The Machismo, of mano-a-mano brutality, the Cockstrut Blues and the Clash of Gash…to expose the Child Within to such criminal Darwinian notions as qualitative differentiation and ‘winner take all’ and Primus Inter Parus and ‘good, better, best, bested‘…why this, Sirruh, this would in literary terms surely be as to cock one’s snook in the Godlike Face of Shakespearian Universality & Inclusiveness Itself! T’would grieve me deeply, that is to say, for if this Challenge is to have a motto at all – nay, if Australian Literature in its entirety is to have a motto…then let us all proclaim that it shall be:
Everyone’s Writing Is As Crap As Everyone Else’s - Except Mine.*
5. If however the process of LP peer assessment/debate in the thread to follow does clearly (if informally) identify the best ‘good’ example and the best ‘bad’ example of ‘writing’…then the (optional) prize for both will be one hour of sexual activity of your choice with…me. I’m more than happy to swing both ways in the name of Australian Literature, and within biomechanical limits I am comfortable enough ‘writing’ in both the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ voices across a range of ‘literary genres’, iykwim. (Ho ho ho, fellow bookish rumpy-pumpites, eh!?)
6. All naughty come-ons aside, the real ‘collective prize’ arising from this challenge is of course one in which we can all share: the chance to explore our opposing ideas of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ writing by way of specific examples. Hey nonny-nonny and Huzzah!
7. Finally, I am aware that this is blog-crashing of an extreme kind. As one who has a longish history of personal and collective blogging I am grudgingly familiar with the various blog-conventions and etiquettes I am likely transgressing. The Moderators hereabouts will and should naturally ignore this challenge, and preferably erase it ASAP, should it be deemed silly or ill-judged. Or if, for example, LP-ers, for all their high-falutin’ book learning and huffledy-puffledy pompous academe-speak, are in fact a bunch of SMUG, JIBBERING, BLATHERING, SELF-IMPORANT, WANNABE CHICKENPOO DILETTANTE PEN-LICKERS WHO ARE ALL TOO SCAREDY-WAREDY TO SHOW ANYONE THEIR UNASHAMEDLY ‘BEST EFFORT’ FICTION-WRITING CHOPS, NYAY NYAH NYAH YOU WUSSBAGS….!!!
Ahem.
I do present this challenge in seriousness and good faith and hope very much others here might see it as an interesting literary experiment, if nothing else…one worth its own thread even.
But I am nothing if not a cyber-realist, and in these free-market-information times recognize that Great Literature, perhaps above all other market commodities, is now all about ‘The Bottom Line’. Thus, as an incentive to what after all must appear to be a fairly onerous (and intimidating?) challenge/chore to LP’s lazier cynic-scribblers…I’m happy to announce that I will donate a $5 ‘entry fee’ to LP’s coffers on behalf of every genuine attempt to rise to this bait. I’ll have to limit this donation to a total upper limit of $200 (which = about half a week’s wages for me), to save me embarrassment with rent and food this month.
But I am keen to see what youse f***kers can do with fiction even briefly, and I don’t mind paying what I can afford for the privilege if that’s what it will take. Anyone else who reckons this is a worthwhile experiment and who, like me, is interested in seeing just what writers of the stimulating potential calibre/diversity of Mark, Nabakov, JC, Bring Back EP at LP, Kim, Laura, Naomi, Brian, Yobbo, Jason, CS, Steve Edney, Geoff Honner, Zoe, JPZ, et al et al et al can do…please do feel free to add further financial impetus to my challenge.
There, I’ve named some of youse, so youse can’t wimp out, can youse.
* I would be grateful if a Riverside lad or another LP-er of that ilk might ‘Latinise’ this for me for effect.
The Literary Cock-on-the-Block
As I said I hope this isn’t a too-gauche hijacking of your excellent site. I’m just a little sick of all these ‘death of literature’ scares being discussed ‘in the abstract’. The size and age of my own rejection slip collection demonstrates that I myself haven’t yet learned the difference between the ‘good’ the ‘bad’ (and the ‘ugly’) of fiction writing, and perhaps I just don’t have enough talent in my gas tank no matter how much I keep at it (sigh, rage, yaarrrpp, rage)….but for what it’s worth I’m happy to provide the first example entry as a guide.
* * * *
Example entry:
Genre: Contemporary literary fiction
Style: Straight narrative
Writer: KKKKKKK
LP Status: 2nd time commenter
Entry type: This is supposed to ‘good’ writing.
…almost as if the neon lights were mocking him that way, until suddenly there’s John Delaney Smythe, rage rising and lumpen bulk descending, veered in and down the steps, leaving his centre of gravity with the doorman’s wrong-footedness and lurching for the low-line in one falling parcel of sweat and flesh. Pausing on the sticky landing of Level B2 to extract the nine-inch Phillips from his pocket, still wrapped in its clear plastic sheath but with the naked tip cutting ominously through, he saw David Jones immediately. He was leaning back onto the main bar on one elbow, grinning like a country and western singer on an album cover. Smug as a….cuckholding c–t. Struck cold by the familiar overpowering profile, John Smythe wondered if five months downstream Jane’s baby would look like…but…her baby…for Christ’s sake - wincing inwardly at that distancing grammatical tic, that internal nod to doubts now hovering…because yes, fucking yes: what if when it arrived it did burble up at its dupe of a putative father from the puddle of blood through just that characteristic curled grub of flesh - David Jones’s lusty upper lip there, just over there, leering at the disrobing slag on the bar stage as if she’d just crawled out from under his own naked hairy bulk, reeking of sweat and self-disgust?
What if the filthy brat was his?
And then John desperately wanted a daughter, too; there was that. Here, in a strip club, about to confront the lousy bastard who’d been spiking his duffed wife for god knows how long…part of the poor suckered dipshit here was still thinking about how lovely a little baby girl would be. Aawww…blinking, John suddenly felt like he’d caught himself wanking in a church, and for the briefest moment even more unconscionable juxtapositions of flesh and fertility – the cuckhold, the wife, his lover, their pregnant infant daughter the pole-dancer - nearly made him throw up. Again, he wanted to cry. His Best Man had been back in Sydney for…what, about five months, two weeks, two days and sixteen hours? About that…goddammit, how long had they been doing it…if you gave a shit about precision in any numbers outside the Department, that is…which John, until then a walking cliché in impractical academic eccentricity, now did. Sure - had done since about ten past three that afternoon, in fact. Eons ago, really; personalities ago…it was interminably slow, this business of involuntarily shedding your certitudes on a sudden bummer twist like this, man; discarding the bedrock assumptions of your previous life, all thanks to the lamest and dumbest of married life clichés. And so now 1 1 was 3-in-a-bed and Pi was the ratio of his cock-size to yours, say….with Professor John Smythe here still a goddamned lingering Newtonian in a seven dimensional field roiling with rampant rutting quanta and cavernous, heaving singularities.
Looming.
There in the dark, staring at the treacherous prick under neon at the bar, he knew that shrug the last of the old equations off he must. And would. Here, now, forever. The singularity looming. Here, in Dinamites, where young girls came to take off their clothes and have sex with strange men, for money. For numbers. A fruity bottom-line for a fruity bottom line. There was a moral in there somewhere, but John had other things on his mind just then. Fast things, now: everything was speeding up, becoming almost pointlessly fleeting, and he knew it was futile to seek refuge in reasonableness or rationality or – joke – ‘professional ethics’ for the next bit of his life. Not now, not anymore; not when he was forever marooned in the dead zone of the asymptote x = 1/3:10 pm. What he wanted here was testosterone and hate and the warmth of torn bloody flesh under his jaws. The singularity looming…and he found that the ancient necessary energies were there, alright…it was there. The dog was still in him, coughing itself awake and uncurling now under the nasty metal prods. If the eight hours since he learned about the affair had seemed turgid, wounding deeply but in dulled slow motion only, now that the architect – ‘architect’, yes, another drollery - of his humiliation was within physical hurting distance, the hatred was growing unbearable: sharp and hot and now compelling and finally…liberating.
Release cost John Smythe eight strides, four words and, discovered later in the splendid Sheraton bubble bath with which he garlanded his first battlefield triumph, a strained right rotator cuff. With the thin young blurred white slip apparently sharpening her labia on the stainless steel pole directly beyond his former best friend, the UTS Chair in Geospatial Mathematics barreled in hard and close, arm raised, and bellowed over the music:
“Is it yours, you fuck?’
And poor David Jones, just a little tanked and fatally chained to the past himself, not seeing the rearing singularity as its author leapfrogged past…he just pivots idly on his stool, flexes his arms, grins through his stupid beard. Arches his white throat high to meet John’s gaze, as if in invitation.
A blessing, that; he really should have stood. Even John Smythe’s fizzing bestial core had been stumped to then on where best to spike the fucker.
“John…ing here? Sorry….what?â€?
With the girl now removing her spangled panties directly behind his dropping shoulders. And David’s eyeballs already flickering up and to the left, too, the rest of him skewing instinctively away from the high quivering glint there. Pennies tumbling into space-time place, or poker machines…click, click…dagger, dagger…
“Is it YOURS?� …is this another …dagger?…
And so then there’s like this smallest momentary absenting of lewd beat; a null of quiet, a pure fluke; and so then this girl on the stage just happens to enter the tableau, too; and to John her scream might as well have been a green flag thrashed towards the tarmac.
“….wait…John, wait…SHI…� …dagger…4 gay blades, K-ching!…and then the blood flowing like a jackpot mainline vein, or spewing, or spraying, really. Looping. Slithering. Snaking. Geysering. Only a month later does anyone notice the crusted Pollock-arc gracing the ceiling; meanwhile, glasses like dominoes across the bar, as David Jones goes down sideways and slow, just a shade off elegance, guided - almost tenderly - to the ground by his former friend. Meat-hooked there off the embedded tool was he laid soft down to rest in a pool of warm beer, the stool toppling mournfully in the opposite direction in spite of John Smythe’s best efforts at maintaining spatial discretion and decorum outside the matter directly at his hand.
Already the music urging the screecher on stage to get on with it again; blood-flecked and retching, she’s gone off these sexy clubs for good, but for a few long seconds she actually goes through the motions. Blinks it off. Screams again, finally covering herself.
Crouching, John Smythe watched the last man to fuck his wife shiver into death, thumping gently against the base of the bar. When he straightened it was up into a new world. Immediately he felt a million feet tall. He weighed ten thousand tons. In his new self reposed a galaxy of killing machines. Immortal and invincible, at one with…then the incontinent blood and the girl’s flat keening and the sudden silence and the sound of yelping from elsewhere registered at last.
“He was screwing my wife,� he explained, to no-one in particular.
With many heads swinging his way now he turned and made bloodily and calmly for the stairs. On the way up he had to sidestep three charging bouncers, but they gave him no trouble, no trouble at all.
* * * *
Some entry types (‘good’ and ‘bad’ examples there-of) additional to CLF I think would be fun, interesting and useful in discussion:
Genres: Crime, Erotic, Historical, Romance, Techno-Thriller, SF, Political, Young Adults, Fantasy, Sex-n-Shopping, Comedy
What does LP think? Dumb idea? Please excuse, disregard and/or delete if so.
Neat idea, how about I put it up as a guest post of its own?
Yeah, I’ll play.
Mark, please do put the comment up as a guest post. I cannot take it all in as it is set out right now.
It does sound like a good idea.
I will be a happy reader, not contributor, to such a competition though. I have never fancied myself as much of a fiction writer.
I became a blog reply person to mix with a better class of people. That’s all.
KKKK, what a spiel. If this was my blog I’d be demanding a $1,000 donation straight away.
I have never had a single thing of mine rejected.
Mainly because I’ve never submitted anything.
R.H.
Loving you. His whole life through.
Cristy your gravatar is similar to the cover on my copy of STUCK, by Michelle Turner. Subtitled: Unemployed people talk to Michelle Turner. (Penguin 1983)
It’s a marvellous book.
I found it last year in a dusty old shed at Laverton trash market.
And as far as Australian writing goes, I consider it shameful that no later editions have been printed. Far as I know.
Because she was a Saint. Really.
That is a very good book RH.
I became a blogger to lure RH into my web.
What Helen said. And also, as I extremely recently posted that *the muse had left me* (ha!) and I was giving it away but only the next night got a nice surprise, I have been turning these sorts of ideas over quite a lot. I would like to contribute as much as I can.
Happy to share 2 cents especially that now Media Dragon is worth a little bit more than 2 cents
according to Technorati and Co … How much is your blog worth?
A recent AMR Research Alert mentions that “one of the world’s largest high-tech manufacturers views wikis and blogs as part of its overarching knowledge management strategy…” This company is also mentioned as being an Open Text LiveLink user and having 64,000 employees in 73 countries:
Reaching the next level
Authority of the Wikipedia
I know you’re thinking in terms of the Australian blog world Mark, and rightly so, but as a matter of general interest I have to put in a plug for my American blog-friend Clancy Ratliff, who is writing a PhD on gender in the blogosphere and does research into academe / blogosphere crossovers. Here’s a recent post about a conference presentation she gave last week on the possibility of using blogging as a form of peer review:
http://culturecat.net/node/1057
About six billion light years ahead of the formless witterings McConvill contributed to Online Opinion recently.
Yeah count me in, blogging has been good to me.
I’m in.
(And I’ll compete for the Bad Crime Writing non-prize as well, while I’m about it.)
Mark:
Yeah, I’ll go along with Lefty Elitist (top of this thread) …. if you’re also including commentators, whingers, brilliant minds, complete drop-kicks, eavesdroppers, ravers and other assorted wildlife.
“Cristy your gravatar is similar to the cover on my copy of STUCK, by Michelle Turner. Subtitled: Unemployed people talk to Michelle Turner. (Penguin 1983)”
I am not sure how to take that RH. I am hoping that it was just a jumping off point to mention a book that you enjoyed. I googled the book, but couldn’t find a picture of the cover, just some listing for it in antique book stores (how did 1983 become antique?). I note that the book contains cartoons by Leunig though.
My gravatar is actually a photo of me (on a train in Vietnam).
Count this little black lurker in. I’ve done a couple of Why I Blog posts, but always happy to play again.
kkkkkkk — you sound like those poetry competitions where everyone is a finalist and we all get to go to a conference to read our work as long as we fund ourselves
Sounds like fun, wish I had more time…
Mark, if you check out the Association of Internet Researchers’ list of publications, you might find summat somewhere, if not an Australian piece, that might provide some model for such a study.
ALso there was a gathering last year - BlogTalk Down Under. Not sure if the sociology of blogging as such was represented, however there are quite a few papers on their website:
http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=38
Pardon me Cristy but the cover is very similar. It shows a young bloke in identical pose. He’s staring out a train window at dirty old factories, on the horizon of a wasteland.
There’s a few little cartoons by Mr Leunig, an introduction by Windschuttle, and on the facing page of the author’s preface there’s a photo of the author herself. She’s standing beside her 1964 Bedford van, badly dressed in the sloppy hip style of the late seventies: wearing a shapeless dress, a bulky oversized cardigan, and a huge smile.
She fitted the old van out with carpet, table and chairs, tape recorder, electric jug, cups, etc, and parked it outside CES offices, enticing customers in for a little chat. “I stood outside and introduced myself to people as they left, explaining what I was doing and invited them for coffee…Some people spoke for hours, others for only half an hour. Usually I didn’t have to ask questions. I turned the recorder on and off, dispensed tea and coffee…The level of emotional openness and trust they showed me was very moving. Their courage and spirit, often in awful situations, was amazing. Their confidence that what I was doing might help to change things has sustained me through long, weary nights of editing.”
Golly. But that’s my kind of academic.
Cristy you are not unusual in being wary of RH. Everything is a jumping off point. Yes. But I’m not suggesting you pirated this image at all. It’s just similar, that’s all.
-Robert.
PS: Michele, has only one l, I mispelled it with two.
She died some years ago, still only in her mid forties. That’s all I could find out.
“…she died some years ago, still only in her mid forties.” How sad to hear this.
Then rest in peace, Ms. Turner. It sounds like lovely, compassionate, important work you did. And here’s hoping that the angels and ministers of grace conspire to get it back into print, where it belongs.
Robert, no worries. I was not feeling particularly concerned. I just honestly wasn’t sure how to take what you had said. The book sounds really interesting though. I might get myself a copy. They were selling for $10 online.
Thanks for the space, LP, for which I’ve sent a donation of $50 (couldn’t stretch to a grand, RH, but I take your point…). If the idea turns out to be of the sex-in-zero-gravity kind, ie fun in theory but in reality too much like hard work and too difficult to coordinate to get a mutually satisfying result…and thus can’t justify its own thread, do please delete it from this one, anyway: it’s a bit clunky and incongruous plonked in the middle of the survey chat, and will only divert future arrivees from what will likely turn into an important and interesting conversation.
Either way, thanks to those who’ve said they’d be up for a go. I do think that even a few different attempts could lead a discussion on ‘literature’ to some interesting places. There’d obviously be no need for leaden, over-earnest 1000 worders like mine, btw. Pavlov’s Cat might reckon a ‘bad’ Crime pastiche of my scene only needs 200. Be happy to widen the options to include this site’s penchant for haikus and even more obscure forms of poetry, along with limericks, visual literature, even cartoons, whatever…for those pressed for time, maybe you could see how ’short’ you can get the scene out…etc…
Touchy-feely literary theorisin’ aside, it’s stimulating for any writer - any kind of stuff, anywhere, anyhow - to explore how many different ways there are to tell the same story…here’s a great example of such ‘exercises in style’ by Matt Madden.
Thanks again for the space, LP-ers. I won’t post on this again unless a separate thread is after all considered worthwhile.
Not at all, KKKK. I think you’re being amazingly generous. And innovative. Good work!
I got my copy for $1.00, Cristy. And if you think I’m feeling smug about it, you’re right.
i_p_z. Thanks for the comment.
I started blogging to try understand why people are so into it. I promised myself I’d keep going until I “got it”.
In July it’ll be a year and so far I’m none the wiser. So count me in.
I’ve put up the guest post, as requested, here.
And thanks to all those who are willing to participate in the blogging research. I’ll be in touch.
Me too.
How many euphemisms can I find for “show off”?
Whoops, Mark, nearly forgot. If your research scope includes non-Australians (and non-Australian neophyte non-blog-of-their-own types) then I’m happy to help out. Good luck with it either way!
Dr Richard Phillipps
Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences
Bond University
Refereed paper presented to the Journalism Education Conference, Griffith University, 29 November – 2 December 2005 …
Left-leaning (28 sites) - Alert and Alarmed (Evan Jones), Anonymous Lefty ( Melbourne), Armagnac’d (penname Armaniac, Melbourne), Back Pages (Christopher Sheil), Barista (Melbourne), Big Bob’s ( Tasmania), Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony (Helen , Melbourne), Crazy Brave (Zoe ?, Canberra), Cut Price Commentariat (Liam Hogan), Daily Flute (Sydney), Darpism.com (Sydney), Go Away, Please (”Brownie”, Victoria), Gravyland (anonymous), John Howard, Prime Minister (spoof), idMedia (Elias Bizannes and Andrew Quah, Sydney), Karma to Burn (“Burnt Karmaâ€?, Melbourne), Larvatus Prodeo (Mark Bahnisch), Token Lefty (Ben Glasson), Antony Lowenstein (journalist and author, Sydney), Perth Independent Media Centre (anonymous authors), Public Opinion (Gary Sauer-Thompson), Rank and Vile (anonymous, Melbourne), Red Rag (Robert Corr), Road to Surfdom
I’ve read Phillipps’ paper, courtesy of Zoe, and erm, I don’t think it’s very good research.
Thanks, j_p_z, I’m inclined to keep it to Oz/NZ blogs because there’s enough done on US blogs, but perhaps US readers of Oz blogs would qualify?
Available here, Brownie and Mark.
Is there an alternate way to get that .doc Liam? It downlaods but then just wants to open in Word for Mac which I have no intention of buying.
Never mind. Solved.
Because she was a Saint. Really.
Ahem, well I’d like to claim it was me, but it wasn’t. Really.
I have no idea why I blog. Yes I do. To stop myself from reading U.S. blogs and hurling a brick through my screen. No, not really. But you can ask. Althugh I won’t guarantee you a coherent reply.
Mark, I’m always keen to do surveys. I like looking at how well they are designed. But that’s just me.
Amanda, I hear your pain. I’m hanging out for an OSX native version of Open Office so that I can junk Word.
…
Oh, and please put me down, Mark, as a sociological volunteer. If there are to be any side-effects of the testing (heart failure, stroke, massive haemorrhage etc.) can I please have one of the placebo survey forms. Ta.
Brownie did not endorse or praise Dr Phillip’s paper on bloggers.
It was immediately evident that my own blog’s inclusion in the sample with heavy hitters like Quiggin, indicated Dr P was floundering.
When I brought it to the attention of my blogpals, I commented that ‘Doctorates seem to be handed out to anybody these days’.
I blog because I am over-opinionated and super-critical.
There are bigger nutters than me around as well.
I’m in.
Happy to chip in my two cents.
I am interested in the study you’re proposing, although it probably going to be tricky to do a formal empirical study. As it happens I also blog occaisionally so I’m happy to participate in your study too.
Cheers
Lisa, desertpeablog at gmail