April 24 round up
1 week ago
Wednesday 15 October 2008
Blogging....
So my dissertation is on the use of blogging within archaeology. What purpose it has and the effects on the subject as a whole. Right now I have more questions than answers! I guess that's to be expected though. I wonder though what people's perceptions are of bloggers. Before I started this I had images of sad old balding men sitting at their PC's ranting and raving about how young un's were ruining society. Now that I am a blogger (argh!) I can see that is nonsense!! I suppose it can just be an outlet for some people. A way to twitter on without someone telling them to stop moaning and get a life...... I tried to get a life once, but they were sold out.......
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
Well, as your dissertation supervisor, it's good to see this is off the ground. I'm mildly miffed by the reference to sad old balding men, mind ... :-)
we dont include u jeremy!
archeogirl, are u just looking at blogging or do forums count (for comparison or something)? just being nosey!
Well forums are so similar that it can all be placed under the same umbrella really. However for the purposes of my dissertation I'm only really looking at blogs. These can be linked more closely to archaeology rather than forums or even social networking sites that are often full of different topics.... The blogs are keeping me busy anyway so I doubt I'd have the time to expand what I'm looking at!
Surely it should be called Archae-blogogy! I think a blog, especially one that covers an ongoing excavation would be a good idea. A good way of reporting findings as they happen for the modern age, plus the dig itself can be discussed in the comments section like this.
It's interesting looking at your blog list - it could suggest (admittedly at this early stage!) that the more active blogs are those which largely report news items etc. while the less active ones (and some very much so) tend to be the more discursive, introspective, personal variety. Are the former 'easy' and the latter much harder to keep going?
Oh - and thanks, Rowena! I'm greatly reassured. Archaeogirl said as much, but ... ;-)
THAT'S a good point, I suppose in some respects a personal blog regarding archaeology or archaeblog as I shall call it, is both unpopular and harder to maintain for a number of reasons. Being personal it requires that bit more effort to give it that personal touch and time is a hard thing to spare occasionally. Also the use of personal opinion in something like this removes the primary thing most people would visit an archaeology blog for. Namely, hard evidence and shiny things. Discuss :D
Posting news items helps the blogger in a few ways.
One, it act's a draw to the site. How are people going to be drawn to your site?
More people google Stonehenge (say) than post-processualism. But they might then be drawn to read an article on the latter if the blogging on the former is well done.
Two, Interaction. The more people reading the site, the more of a response for the blogger. This is vital to keeping the bloggers interest going. It's pointless without an audience.
Three, Structure. It ensures that the blogger has a reason to post every day.
Four, Inspiration. The more the blogger is on the web looking for news stories the more they'll come across topics they want to blog about, which reminds me of a story......
As for who bloggers are, well they're everybody! There's a blog for everything out there.
I noted with some amusement the perception that bloggers are old peope bitching about the young. Most people of my peer group would perceive them as being youg people bitchin' about how like, woteva lol!
AG, I think you need to ask yourself some pretty fundemental questions about this site which by extension will help you with the world of blogging.
What do I want to say?
Who to?
How do I reach those people?
which then leads onto things like:
What do I include?
How do I lay it out?
How often do I post?
Why?
That's quite a list! Nice one ...
Archaeogirl - I think I may have pointed you towards Martin Weller's blog before, so forgive any repetition here. He says some interesting things about digital literacies that seem to me to be quite relevant to blogging? In an earlier post, he also talks about reasons to blog (though I've not managed to run down the earlier post he refers to).
Hello Archaeolgirl,
you might want to have a look at the blog archives on Brightmeadow.co.uk
Cas, who runs the blog sat an MSc in Archaeo-computing with me in 2006 and her dissertation was about the use of wiki's in archaeological writing, but she talks a lot about archaeology and blogging on her blog. She writes well about her own personal reasons for blogging, and her blog is a good jumping off point to other archaeologists and academics.
Another good place to look is pastthinking which is a blog run by a professional archaeologist (who runs the company blog as well as his own). Wessex and Oxford archaeology both have blogs too which are used for outreach work, promoting and discussing recent finds and work :)
Good luck with your dissertation!
Hello Archaeogirl :)
Ooh, thanks for the plug there Neko! (a couple of the pages she is talking about are here and here.
I'll second Neko's plug for pastthinking. It might also be a good idea to have a look in on the Antiquist.org mailing list. It's full of archaeologists and heritage people using digital tech and blogs in new and exciting ways.
I look forward to reading what you have to say on the subject, and good luck with your dissertation!
i think probably the main reason why the news blogs get more hits is because people are more interested in what is happening in the world rather than what is happening in various people's personal lives - yes they are harder to write and keep up, but they are also unnecessary to the workings of modern society. if you look back at your earlier posts you seemed to have an expectation that bloggers were particular members of society who didn't have much of a (worldly) life.
Post a Comment