read … reading … read … 050208

Just finished reading Blogging thoughts: publication as online research tool by Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker.
Though the article is written back in 2002, many of the things still hold true for blog, a genre as defined in the article. Looks like blog has more or less adopted its present form back then. Some of the interesting ‘findings’:
Blogger Pro, which provides more features, is available back then.
The Theory of the Public Sphere by J�rgen Habermas is used to describe/determine the private-public nature of blog.
One feel safe in his/her blog as you have total editorial control, and the posts are often short and unpretntious.
Rigours and formal citation practice in academic writing is practised in blogs through links. These links are random and it allows one to share experience (books read, website visted etc). These links are ‘vital to the genre‘.
Blog This by Henry Jenkins is the first article published on weblogs by an academic.
Expressing one’s thought in a blog may result in one losing his own ideas too early. This is one of the greatest fear of an academic, due to the current ‘reward system’ in the trade of academia.
The chornological arrangement of blog entries documents our thought processes. ‘Unedited, spontaneous, scrolling away‘ thoughts are always on the top of the page.
Popularity of a blog is determined by how often it is linked by other blogs/sites. Blogs tend to come together in clusters as they linked to each other.
The look and feel (visual appearance) of a blog is important.