let’s poke it and see what happens
Over on the Networked Rhets blog, there’s been all kinds of discussion about blogs and genre. (My colleague Clancy also wrestled with this topic a while back.) I’ve been thinking about blog classifications a bit lately as well, since they figure into a research project I’m mapping out. In Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs, Susan Herring and her group seem to have developed a working schema that classifies blogs as k-logs (knowledge-logs), journals, and filters. Most people seem to work along these lines, and some (like Van Dijck) differentiate between diaries and journals. The thing is, I don’t see my blog in any of those categories. Mine shifts from week to week. This past week, it's looked more like an k-log than anything else. Last week when I was complaining about my car for days on end, it looked more like a journal. And none of that accounts for the pinups. My blog is a digital commonplace book, and I ended up adding that category to my schema to account for the other mishmash folks like me.
Comments
I struggle with applying classification systems for some of the reasons you point to here, Krista. And I suppose this extends all the way into the recent buzz about tagging systems, category labels and so on. Blogging, for me, feels like constant categorical evasion and shifting. Whatever the pattern (a series of entries on ___), it'll be followed by a turn, perhaps toward or away from any of the temporarily appropriate labels. And yet I understand such schemas are necessary for identifying patterns where they emerge.
Posted by: Derek | January 29, 2005 7:18 PM
A couple of semesters ago, Spencer Schaffner asked his students to do a brief, 2-page genre analysis of weblogs. You might be interested in seeing the assignment prompt.
Posted by: Clancy | February 2, 2005 8:00 PM