Mapping the Blogosphere
: 'blogosphere' the collective term encompassing all weblogs or blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogosphere Wikipedia]
You've gotten a start on blogging, and while you might be new to blogging and may not have read many blogs or explored the territory in much detail or very widely, you're getting a sense of what's out there and how it's more or less arranged. And collectively, you have a larger sense of the space than you might have individually. So, even though your sense of what's out there might be incomplete and vague, it can help to map out what you know already.
As a group, and using Big Paper: Draw a diagram or map of the blogosphere as you understand it right now. It may be incomplete ("Here be monsters"), and distorted (The Gulf of Mexico too near Lake Superior) but even the sketchiest map defines areas to explore.
To consider
What 'terms' will you use to map the space?
- terms from writing (in the manner of Blood: purpose, aim, self-expression...);
- genres such as poetry, letters, essays (or notebook, filter, weblog from Blood);
- subjects or topics (blogs about Science, blogs about Art....);
- source or community (journalist, teenager, corporate, high-tech community...).
- ...
- How will you represent the space pictorially? circles? overlapping circles? islands? a forest with paths? something else?
- How will you represent the relations between elements? lines? spaces? something else?
There are a few significant features of weblogs that a map might be able to illustrate. See how you work with these:
- See if you can get your map to place a 'range' of purposes and kinds of blogs. Blogs can be used for ends other than the personal. Where do you place those blogs in the blogosphere?
- How might you indicate blog communities created by blogrolls?
- How might you indicate that blogs tend to link to other places on the web?
- ...
The BlogSites page on this wiki presents a one-dimensional sketch of one corner of the blogosphere.
below the line
Convention on a wiki places notes, asides, alternatives, stuff that doesn't yet quite fit the main text below the double lines.Blood presents her rough sketch of
- kinds of blogs: weblogs, notebooks, and filters
- aims / purposes in blogging: sharing info (about world, self, others); building reputation; self-expression
Others divide the blogosphere into territories and products: corporate blogging is information exchange - college blogging is gossip
We don't need to abandon Blood's distinction of weblog / filter / notebook - and differentiated from paper journals. Don't need to abandon her idea of motivations and aims. We can build on these.
What's your sense of the territory - as it stands now? What's it look like? Who lives here and what to they do?
Into the Blogosphere, a collection of articles on weblogs tends to define the space in terms of discourse, discursive communities, social action and social exchange, and other rhetorical matters. There are other ways.
Tag clouds (there are two on the []http://biro.bemidjistate.edu/blog/index.php blogroll of my blog]]) are a large-grained, updating map of the lexical space of a collection of entries or a collection of webpages.
CategoryBlogging CategoryExercise
