BLOGOGRAPHY

Blog watching with a purpose

By: Alicia Dudek & Kate Saunderson

We are looking into how people use, abuse, and reuse new media through consumption and production of content.

BLOGOSPHERE

Mapping the idea space and focusing the scope

Understanding the blogosphere’s role in relationships

People

Blogosphere/

InternetTechnology

ThreeMain zones of exploration

• People– Who are the people in the seats?• Online – reading blogs – writing blogs – commenting –

replying - participating

– Involvement in the blogosphere• Who, what, when, where• With who – the groups, the organization of groups, the

organization, hierarchies• How much time is dedicated to this form of new media

entertainment?

What are you DOING?

• Blogosphere– A form of new media– An umbrella term for online log writing, journal writing,

criticism, reviewing, chronicling, the commentary mechanism, social system, subculture, and the literacy of the participants

– The collective works of the bloggers and commentators– The physicality of blogs as well as the ethos or ether of

the blogosphere– Meta-blogging ; blogging about blogging; “I blog

therefore I am”

What are you DOING?

• Technology– The stuff you use to make it happen (meaning the

blogosphere)– The behavior of people with regards to technology– How people use, abuse, and reuse technology

meaning new media?– Tailoring technologies– How often and how long are the interactions with

technology?

What are you DOING?

WHY are you doing it?

WHY are you doing it?

WHY are you doing it?

THE INTERNET BARRIER

WHY are you doing it?

THE INTERNET BARRIER IS SOMETHING FLUID THAT EBBS AND FLOWS CREATED BY USERS

BLOGGER AS THEY ARE ONLINE

VERSUS

BLOGGER AS PEOPLE IN THE REAL WORLD

WHY are you doing it?

What PEOPLE and why?

People Reading• Reading blog posts• Commenting on blog posts• Replying to comments, etc.• Attending events planned online

through blogs, or implementing the advice or knowledge from the blogs.

• Returning to regular blogs.• Blogs they you look at to be

entertained, just for fun?– Blogs that merge fun and function?

• How do you find other blogs?– Google, search– Blog subscription, RSS feeds, links– Reading blogs on blog agglomerator

sites– Through websites

People Writing

• Writing blog posts• Commenting on blog posts• Replying to comments, etc.• Blogging replies to other online

content• Reacting and responding to real

world or virtual world events, you tube videos, retweeting, etc.

• Linking of blogs and whys and hows, etiquette/ literacy

• Networking• Organizing events

THE

INTE

RNET

BAR

RIER

OK… but I still don’t get it

Can you explain more about what “internet (didactic) barrier” means?

Exactly the question we would have asked ourselves. We have been thinking about this a lot and its a difficult thing to pinpoint because this barrier is very fluid and takes many forms. I can answer this question best with a story about the video game Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear Solid was released on the Playstation 2 console back in the day. It was one of the culminating games of its time and came to represent what a high quality game should look like, but it also contained elements that broke the rules of video games. In one of the later stages of the game the main character, a gunslinger named Snake, is battling one of the final bosses. Psycho Mantis, the boss, has telepathic and telekinetic powers. Throughout the fight, Psycho Mantis begins to ask the player if they enjoyed playing other video games and making comments on how often they saved or how other games were played. By reading the memory cards contents and breaking the 4th wall Psycho Mantis, is illustrating how a video game can breakout of the game atmosphere and truly unsettle the user. This is further deepened when during the battle Psycho Mantis disables the users controller leaving them helpless. In order to defeat Psycho Mantis the player must move the controller from port 1 to port 2 in order to regain control. By demanding this physical action in order to interact and reading the memory card with the players personal information, Metal Gear Solid was revolutionary. Here is a video of the part of the game we are discussing Metal Gear Solid Psycho Mantis Boss Fight.

Screenshot:Metal Gear

Solid

The internet barrierWhat does this mean?• The internet barrier mentioned in our video can be viewed as an

interaction barrier. It is constantly changing due to technology and the actions of users. It is like the surface of a giant bubble in a state of fluxus. The player of Metal Gear Solid is like our blogosphere participant. The game console is our technology. Psycho Mantis is a representation of the blogosphere. The blogger puts themselves out there by creating representations of themselves online. By creating these representations and interacting in the community the blogger is "filling up the memory card" which can then be read and utilized by the blogosphere community in order to interact directly with the blogger. The commentary and reply mechanism which is fundamental to blogosphere literacy acts as a way of breaking the 4th wall between bloggers and the online world. That's what it means at the moment in our context.

Crossover Connection Artifact

BLOGPOST

FROM: WWW.VIDEOGAMEY.COM

Sidenote:

HOW TO BEAT THE METAL GEAR SOLID BOSS PSYCHO MANTIS

As the story about Metal Gear Solid illustrates its really creepy when the 4th wall is not only broken but a person's private, public, personal, professional, virtual, and physical world's begin to collide. Blogger's are actively seeking this collision and forming it in their own hands by shaping their interactions with this fluctuating barrier. This is what we really want to explore. How the people shaping the barriers are changing the way that the blogosphere reads people and how interactions are created.

What other relationships are you going to explore?

What is the relationship between blogs and technology?

We see that there is a relationship between the availability of technology, the form of blogs, the ways that they are used to interact and get updated. This relationship has an effect on how people connect, learn, and share information. If people have more access than others there will be differences in how people get "caught up" in the virtual world or construct their virtual world. The barriers that each user puts in place, shielding parts of private life from the online world and vice versa, are crucial in understanding the entertainment landscape. Technology and its availability is fundamental to any shifts in online behavior. It can either enable or prohibit certain actions, even going so far as to create entirely new patterns of behavior. Looking at how those patterns are formed and influenced, during the development of the blogosphere, cannot have been mutually exclusive to the development of technology. Our research would venture into the relationship between original blogs, their traditional format of long written posts, to that of the new forms of blogs, their predecessors, such as twitter, vlogging, Flickr, photo blogs – the morphing of this area alongside new mobile technology, increased internet access, digital literacy/attention span.

did that help clarify?

What QUESTIONS and WHY?How do we break through the wall of questions?

Things we can learn by blogsurfing• Define community in blogosphere: blogging community mapping,

Twitter feed study• Identify groups + communities of blogs: observe and record.

Examples: 'Fail blog'/ 'Itmademyday'/ 'Post Secret '• Document behavior of commenting: Observe blog’s and zoom in

on comment behavior and literacy• What tech made it happen: Trackback what technology was used• How do people design the frames (camera angle): What tools do

they use?• Framing bloggers: Digital observation/ select questionnaires• Frequency of blog posts: Observe blog replies and comment• Blog success – public blogs, popular blogs• How people began: look at early blog posts, interviews

What QUESTIONS and why?

What QUESTIONS and WHY?Our questions focus on uncovering the nature of this relationship. Users interact and interpret along this line. We are zeroing in on what, when, where, who, and why.

Questions we want to answer• Where people blog: physically and virtually• Blog history• Validity of blog output• Blog stats active/passive – No. of dead blogs• Blogosphere demographics• People motivations in digital spaces• Scale of blog writer: create scale/find scale• Scale of tech literacy: create scale/find scale• Stakeholders• Sites frequently used

What QUESTIONS andWHY?

Questions to ask people• Q. Did any technology help or hinder your move

to blogging?• Q. Where do you blog? Physically & Virtually• Q. How you got into blogging?• Q. Why do you blog now?• Q. Time spent on blogs?• Q. Do you see yourself as a blogger?• Q. How people began their blogs?• Q. How do you find blogs?

What QUESTIONS and why?

But…

how are you going to ask questions?

• Digital and real ethnography methods will be mixed in order to see the whole picture. This illustrates the spectrum of real or virtual involvement during the course of the method.

INNOVATIONS:• Catch a “viral” blog wave or comment wave and ride it• Blog tour – a blogger takes you along on a physical or virtual

tour of their blog • Focus group on blog avatar creation

– Using whiteboard blocks in order to have people role play through the creation of a blog community

– Individual identity avatar creation, post it note tags on 3 dimensional shapes in order to provide a physical anchor i.e. action figure

What METHODS and why?

What METHODS and why?Method Type Examples

Spectrum

of invasiveness

HIGH Monitoring over time

Looking at comments / time increments

Getting feedback form blogger being monitored

Monitoring Passively Watching blogs and noting post frequency

Watching Public blogs versus individual blogs

Direct Observation Watching people blog & participatory observation

Videos, vlogging – check associations – blog twitter facebook

Full Interview In person, online Blog tours, blogger directs

Dialogue Have a chat & email exchanges

Contacting commenter & asking them / watching their comment patterns

1 OFF – single instance of interaction or exchange

Comment and ask,Things of note, behaviors seen on the fly, note down related blurbs / or interesting

Instances of seeing something in a blog during desk researchLOW

What METHODS and WHEN?

What OUTPUT and why?• Make your last output match your next input• Design of a focus group on blogs: Blog avatar creation role-playing• Quantitative Statistics

– Counting of the instances that certain similar events occurred– Supplemented by desk research into overall blogosphere population and

statistics• Stories

– Specific illustrative examples of stories– Persona creation – a form of storytelling

• Reflection on the methods and processes used– Documentation of all methods and processes used

• FINAL DELIVERABLE– In a format that easily and clearly communicates the findings– Form, kind, analysis, visualization, presentation

What OUTPUT and WHY?

Must be satisfy demands:• INTEGRITY• INTERESTINGNESS• FORM• FUNCTION

Questions & Comments?

• Please email us:• Alicia Dudek– alicia.dudek@gmail.com

• Kate Saunderson– klsaunderson@gmail.com

Image Sources

• http://www.bubbleinc.co.uk/pages/images/thought_bubble.jpg

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayZG-RJCUYs&feature=related

• www.informationisbeautiful.net