Mathemagenic

I've been thinking for a while on weblogs as boundary objects (and bloggers as boundary subjects :). I don't think I'm 100% on classical definitions here, but don't be angry - I need to play with the idea to see what comes out of it.

Also: you may want to read Denham on boundary objects here and here

My interest in blogging pretty much defined by the fact that weblogs cross boundaries - this is where the most of fun lies and the most of troubles occur. So, when conceptmapping some PhD thinking today I came up with this branch (I have to admit that this is not a generic case, but reference to my own research):

So, what shapes my own blogging practices (these are different angles of the same thing):

Contexts where blogging has to fit: my personal practices (e.g. those of dealing with information, technologies or time), practices of people around me (e.g. norms of communication) and practices of the organisation I work for (e.g. regarding confidentiality).

Communities I belong to (this overlaps with the previous category - have to think what to do with it). Those shape at least two aspects - themes that run through my blog and ways of doing things. Theme-wise I'm influenced by topical communities (e.g. KM vs. learning vs. technology), but there are also differences at the level of doing (e.g. researchers vs. practitioners).

Another way to look at blogging is it's position on the edge between public and private - it has elements of control and safety of my own space and exposure of being in public.

Finally, research-wise my weblog is used in several ways: blogging is a way to participate in the communities I study, it's an instrument for collecting and analyseing the data and it's a publication medium. Normally those things would be separated (at least by time, space and audiences).

Semi-related earlier posts (the list is mainly for myself since suprisingly I don't have a tag where those things would be collected):

• Third culture kids and research kunstkamera
• Studying weblogs at Microsoft: blogging as a person or as an employee
• AOIR: Not documenting, doing: blogging as research
• Edges
• Individual in a public space: learning from weblogs and cities
• Hard choices: researcher vs. blogger?
• Blog networking, blogwalking and being a boundary subject
• Weblogs: conversations with self and conversations with others
• Personal ways of doing things in public
• BlogTalk: who owns narrated experiences?
• A Socio-Technological Approach to Sharing Knowledge Across Disciplines