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| Image Credit: "Blog With Authenticity." Search Engine People's Blog. CC BY 2.0 |
For this response, begin by reflecting on the following statement Rebecca Blood makes in a reading from this upcoming week:
An audience is passive; a public is participatory. We need a definition of media that is public in its orientation. --From “A history”.
While reflecting consider how this statement relates to your understand of the interactivity that is possible between bloggers (those who occupy the encoder position of a communication event) and audiences (those who occupy the decoder position in a communication event).
Then, in a post to your process blog, describe why you think Rebecca Blood makes this statement? In other words, why do we need a "media that is public in its orientation"? Posts should incorporate strong writing principles in that
- you should advance one claim that directly relates to the prompt above;
- identify one or two pieces of evidence from one of the readings you have completed that support or demonstrate the claim you advance.
- describe or outline why the evidence, specifically, supports or informs the claim you have advanced;
- reflect on on how you may attempt to build a relationship with an audience for your activist blog
- Hint: You may want to outline/describe briefly who your primary audience may be, and what type of stance you hope to construct with them.
Reading Response 2: Blogs, Blogging, and the Bloggers Part II
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Image Credit: "Blog (detail)."
Lady Madonna. CC NC-ND-BY 2.0
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This week’s readings provide an more detailed sketch of the way that blogging as a genre has emerged, and some of (what I consider) some of the more compelling issues that correspond to this genre. I'd suggest starting with "Weblogs: History and Perspective," because Rebecca Blood provides a really good overview of the history of the genre/phenomena known as blogs/blogging.
Elsewhere, Kevin Kelly provides a history of the internet that pays specific attention to the issue of authorship, writing, and the tensions between consumer-habits and producer-habits. He sees blogging as just one literacy practice that revolutionizes how society is changing, and it seems that he hints at it’s potential to democratize the production of information. As the article concludes, Kelly looks into the future predicting that the historians of tomorrow will see this moment as a point where the world changed in a fundamental way.
John Hockenberry provides a detailed look at the way that soldiers within US military are taking the production and dissemination of information into their own hands. In doing so, these soldiers/sailors are changing the power dynamics associated with who creates and decides which war images and stories of are released (traditionally, corporate media and government agencies have held the powers of production/regulation).
Last, Meredith Badger examines the way that visual media (blogs, specifically) are impacting the way we read, the way we thing and conceive of texts, and argues for attending to the visual dynamics associated writing blogs. A task we will certain perform in our writing over the next 12 weeks of this class.
For this week’s prompt, I ask you to reflect on the way that blogging demonstrates the changes these authors talk about. Specifically, I ask you to reflect on the lesson you’ve found within the three readings and make a claim about whether the democratization of the production of knowledge is good/bad for society (changes to the way society is evolving in terms of visual vs. print-based reading habits are also an area worthy of consideration for this discussion). Provide examples from the readings to support your claim as evidence. And, don’t forget to discuss the implications that these changes might have in the future: for example, what might Kelly if he were looking back in 10-20 years and described the outlook of the way blogging has changed the way society works, the way we read, and whether these changes have helped our nation and world or not. Aim for a response that is 3-4 paragraphs long.
Reading Response 3: (Optional)
If you attended the Harrington School's Ignite event, write a free-form but reflective post (2-3 paragraphs) about one aspect of the event that you thought was important and worth further thought and exploration.
Reading Response 4: Assumptions and Expectations regarding Social Networking
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| Image Credit: "Social Media...."Dion Hinchcliffe. CC BY-SA 2.0 |
When users log into social networks, they add value the those spaces. Users create primary content such as status updates, tweets, upload pictures and video, write and share comments. Users also create information about the type of habits they have and use in their digital lives, including who they interact with in these spaces most, the GPS locations they tag content with, the IP addresses they most commonly log onto sites from, the times when they most frequently write/post/comment/share.
For this week I ask you to respond to two questions: (1) What are the types of expectations you have as a user of social networks about privacy, who can access your content, and what type of content you feel should be shared/kept private. (2) What are reasonable uses of the many different types of content that social media outlets might collect about you and those you interact with?
Reading Response 5: Architectures and Structures
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| Image Credit: "Explaining IA." murdocke23. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 |
For
this week, you read Richard Saul Wurman's "2The Business of
Understanding" (.pdf in Sakai) and Mike Palmquist's "Websites." While there is a significant amount
of understanding to be taken from these chapters, in this reading response we will focus on the
Wurman's discussion of organizing principles, specifically what he
refers to by the acronym LATCH (40). Wurman argues that there are only
five "ways of organizing information" (40): Location, Alphabet, Time,
Category, and Hierarchy.
For
the purpose of this week's response you are asked to examine the way the website you performed the first half of this week's Sakai work project. Go to the URL for the webpage your group has performed a CARP and rhetorical design analysis on and complete
the following two tasks:
First,
analyze the website and determine which of the five organizational
concepts seems to be a relevant way of organizing information for the
location you've selected****. Once you've discovered which seems to be
occurring as an organizational principle, describe the way that
information is organized by that principle.
****(Hint:
It may be thoughtful to think of websites as organized in many of
this ways simultaneously. For instance, what do you see differently when
you click on the 'subordinate' secondary pages? Which organizational principle seems
most relevant from these more 'interior' views?)****
Second,
analyze the website and determine one way that information seems to be
unorganized currently. Offer an example of how you may rearrange that
information based on one of the five LATCH principles that you feel
would help make the page more understandable! For example, I may make
the argument that alphabetizing within that page section may be a useful way
to organize the information that is found there--but I'd still have to explain why I believe alphabetic organization would be the most effective way. Again, remember the
hint I've offered above! There are multiple ways to view the page so
much sure you explain which "view" you've selected before you begin to
respond.
Aim for a 3-4 paragraph response.
Aim for a 3-4 paragraph response.
