I have
to admit, I approached blogging the development of our ideas rather hesitantly
at first. Being new to the blogosphere or blogipelago (Dean, 2010), I wondered how this
approach to research would actually benefit our end product; it seemed
cumbersome, aesthetically driven, time consuming and little better than the old
facebook group in terms of communication potential.
3 weeks
in however, I’ve come to realize the enormous benefit that the blog has had to
the development of our concept. Our blog has very much followed the tenants of
early blogging discussed by Jodi Dean in The Death of Blogging. These
blogs, numbering only 23 in 1999, ‘were logs of websites, signposts left by a
previous navigator of the internet to those wanting to follow that path. The
compiler of that list, the blogger, would also provide commentary on why things
were and were not interesting, useful or reliable…’ (Dean, 2010)
Throughout
this process we have been signposting our ideas, bouncing them off each other
and above all being forced to write posts. This I feel is the key to our
experience of blogging, the lassez faire approach to social media sites leaves
little incentive to publish research on time, and a far smaller degree of
adequate peer review. By publishing our findings to our blog we have opened up
discussion, encouraging other members of our team, the public (we hope), our
lecturers and class mates to partake in the conversation. Simultaneously it has
forced us to consider our online aesthetic, the design of the blog forming
somewhat of a draft for our final web feature.
I’ve
been converted. I’m no longer a blogatheist and I’m looking forward to many
more weeks of drafting, finalizing and discussing our web feature.
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