Weblog conversations revisited: conversations with self vs. conversations with others

Anjo came up with new visualisation that illustrates how conversations with self and with others are connected for a particular blogger:

1. Black: a conversation. All details about the conversation are hidden (in an interactive environment zooming in is always possible).
2. Yellow: a boundary link. A self-link into a conversation. That is, there is a personal link inside the conversation already, but no one else links to a boundary link.
3. Pink: a secondary link. A self-link to a boundary link or another secondary link.

I was almost jumping than I saw that, since it visually confirms my feeling that:

Weblogs as a conversation medium could be particularly interesting in a knowledge management context, as they provide a distributed space for perspective making and perspective taking (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995), thus creating potential for developing innovative ideas (Bonifacio & Molani, 2003). [Efimova & de Moor, 2005: 9].

Of course, not all bloggers in our dataset behave this way and there is a long way between visualising linking practices and actually saying that those help to develop knowledge :).

Finally, a picture of what I do (given that my own practices are different from the majority I have to look at the few methodological issues around it, but the good thing is that there is someone else with similar profile :).

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2007/08/15.html#a1936; comments are here.

• Weblog research: artefacts and practices
• The database of blogs…
• Paper abstract: a weblog case to understand knowledge workers

Tagged as: blog conversations, blog research