[Air-L] Air-L Digest, Vol 73, Issue 11

Julian Hopkins reach at julianhopkins.net
Fri Aug 13 21:39:33 PDT 2010


Hi Juan,

1) Can one treat a blog as a case, chiefly considering the difficulty of
delineating the boundaries of the blog? 
--> Don't see why not, a blogger usually sees their own blog as a clearly
delineated, personal, expression of themselves or an important aspect of
themselves. For example see:
Reed, A., 2005. 'My Blog Is Me': Texts and Persons in UK Online Journal
Culture (and Anthropology). Ethnos, 70(2), 220-242.
Bloggers in my research often argue: 'It's my blog and I'll do what I want
with it!' It's what I call the 'Independence principle'.
 
2) Is it feasible to look at 14 blogs, even though I won't be examining
every little component? How many would be "enough" for a dissertation?
--> 14 blogs is already quite a lot of data to follow, depending on the
frequency of posts and how long you want to follow it, it could even be
overwhelming. 
 
3) Isn't it rather ambitious of my part to analyze texts, visuals and the
content of the webpages which are connected to a given blog post by means of
the hyperlinks embedded in that post? 
--> Similar to above, it could result in too much data. It depends how many
links there are, and how much time etc. you have. If you wanted to do a
detailed analysis of every linked page, you will probably have too much to
do. If you just wanted to categorise them into broad categories (news,
Spanish, English, Canadian, Mexican, government, other blog, etc.) then that
would be more realistic.

4) If I just looked at one mode of semiosis (e.g., written texts), what
would then be the point of looking at these texts online if one does not
attend to the words or stretches of text which fulfill the double function
of being part of the text and nodal points?
--> Just looking at the written texts would be ignoring much of the
multi-modal affordances of blogging, and internet media in general. Using
photos is an important aspect of blogs, and I imagine a blogger new to
Canada, learning about their new environment, would use photos as a powerful
way of representing their experience, and of communicating back to their
friends and family from where they came.

I would question your decision to ignore the comments on the blogs. Comments
are a fundamental component of blogs, and the discussions that arise in the
comments may influence the "representations of language, immigration and
integration" that you are intending to look at. Also, as Carmel noted,
bloggers frequently meet up offline, use backchannels, and so on. These
would surely be important in understanding the experiences of the new
immigrants, and how they make sense of them.

All bloggers in my research have told me that what they put on their blog is
never the full picture; it is a more or less calculated presentation of
aspects of themselves. If a family member or friend is unhappy about
something they blogged about, they may adjust their practices. If they have
regular commenters whom they come to appreciate, or not, they may adapt
their style or content. If they develop a larger audience, they shift in
what they are willing to put online. If they decide to try to monetise their
blog, they may shift again. In principle, it's just the same way we act
offline. 

Hope that helps a bit,

Julian

++++++++++
Blog: www.julianhopkins.net
Twitter: @julianhopkins
Skype: julhop
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Message: 6
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:09:56 -0400
From: "Abrile Juan" <juan.abrile at umontreal.ca>
To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: [Air-L] Blogs for social science research: Dilemmas
Message-ID:
	<B865C162CF25554C8C1264E3F1645AB745AE11 at MAPIUDEM.sim.umontreal.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

Hola,
 
I'm Juan Abrile, a new arrival in the the AIR-list serv. I'm a doctoral
candidate in an interdisciplinary program at Universit? de Montr?al. My
dissertations will be about the representations of language, immigration and
integration on the blogs of Spanish-speaking Latin Americans as they prepare
for immigrating to Quebec and experience the early settlement in Montreal.
 
Currently, I'm in the process of revising my thesis proposal...and it is in
the midst of this thinking process that I'm confronted with certain issues
which I am not sure how to deal with. That's why I'd really welcome your
thoughts, comments, suggestions etc.
 
This is, in a nutshell, where my thinking is at in terms of methodology
 
I have formed a corpus of 14 blogs, each of which I will consider as a case.
Within each blog, I will focus on the blog posts whose content (e.g., oral
and written texts, visuals and hyperlinks) has been created by the author of
the blog and explicitly refers to language, immigration and integration
issues. I will not look at the comments of other blog readers and neither
will I look at the content displayed elsewhere on the web pages (e.g., links
to Facebook, clickable ads, etc. which are part of the general configuration
of the blog). I am, however, interested in looking at the websites / web
pages which are "external" to the blog under analysis and which can be
accesed by means of the hyperlinks included in a post.
 
For analyzing written and oral texts, I'm drawing on Faiclough's CDA (1992,
1995, 2003) approach, chiefly his way of analyzing discourse representation
and assumptions. For exmining visuals, I'll be using Kress and van Leeuven's
(2006) stance on visuals as ideological statements advancing a particular
representation of the social world, social actors and social processes.
Finally, for coping with hyperlinks, I'm considering Burbules' (1997) view
of links as rhetorical artefacts, which may tie in well with Myers' (2010)
taxonomy of links (I'm also aware of Lemke's)
 
Now my questions:
 
1) Can one treat a blog as a case, chiefly considering the difficulty of
delineating the boundaries of the blog? 
 
2) Is it feasible to look at 14 blogs, even though I won't be examining
every little component? How many would be "enough" for a dissertation?
 
3) Isn't it rather ambitious of my part to analyze texts, visuals and the
content of the webpages which are connected to a given blog post by means of
the hyperlinks embedded in that post? 
 
4) If I just looked at one mode of semiosis (e.g., written texts), what
would then be the point of looking at these texts online if one does not
attend to the words or stretches of text which fulfill the double function
of being part of the text and nodal points?
 
Thank you so much for taking the time to read such a long e-mail.
 
Looking forward to your comments,
 
Juan
 
 
 
Juan Abrile
Doctorant en Sciences humaines appliqu?es
Universit? de Montr?al


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