If you came along to the Advanced Research Methods session I did on weblogs and found your way here, welcome and thanks for stopping by. This is the (now dormant) blog I run for the Online Journalism unit I teach, as part of the Journalism BA at Farnham. Feel free to have a nose round.
I'm writing this post a day before the actual session, so I'm not quite sure what we'll get round to covering and what I should include here. I'm hoping to demo how to set up a blog. If I don't get round to it - it's pretty easy to set up your own blog on Blogger
We use this service (which is owned by Google) on the Online Journalism unit, mainly because it’s free. I wrote a basic guide to setting up a blog on Blogger a while ago. Have a look, though the basic set up information on Blogger itself is clear and easy to follow. (By the way, if you're using a PC and not a Mac, you can ignore the info about not using Internet Explorer).
If you want to do more, I’ve posted information on sorting out your blog settings, adding hyperlinks to your blog posts and the different things you can do with a blog.
In the session I'm planning to talk about several academic/researchers who use blogs - I think I'll get round to talking about:
Jill Walker
Anne Galloway
Esther MacCallum-Stewart
Steve Shaviro
I might mention a few interesting spaces - Will Davies is a researcher who works for big name thinktanks but is also doing a PhD - he blogs about it at Potlatch. He's part of an interdisciplinary research group organised by Richard Sennett at the LSE and NYU - it's called Nylon - they use a blog to share ideas and coordinate activities. It's a good example of how you can use blogs to collaborate.
An increasing number of writers/researchers use blogs as they write books they float ideas, put out sections for comment, generate buzz. Chris Anderson was one of the first, for his book, The Long Tail. The tech policy wonk Charles Ledbetter has a blog based around his Demos pamphlet, The Pro-Am Revolution - he's also released an online version of his next book We-Think, a year before the print publication. Neal Lawson, a Brownite political pundit, has a blog about his forthcoming book, All-Consuming. It's about why shopping doesn't make us happy is seems heavily influenced by Zygmunt Bauman.
There is a blog for UCCA postgrads - Sarah Boak plans to use it keep you informed about events/developments/services. Some UCCA phds have experimented with blogs - have a look at Toby Dyter's site to see what can be done on Blogger - Toby's coming along to the session to talk about his blog.
Incidentally, you can use a blog for anything - you don't have to just document your progress and share your ideas - you can just sound off about anything - like Bitch Ph. D. - of course, the person behind this blog has chosen to remain anonymous...
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