For quite a while I’ve been on a conference abstinence track – not submitting papers and limiting attendance in order not to get distracted from the PhD writing.

That’s said, I’m extremely happy writing a paper and going to Internet Research 9.0: Rethinking Communities, Rethinking Place in Copenhagen. It was intense (especially given that I didn’t finish a PhD chapter before leaving) and insightful – it feels that I had all the conversations put on hold over last year in four days… And, the best thing of that came out of it is – somehow having all those conversations really helped me to feel that “I’m there” PhD-wise. Of course, there is still lots of writing to be done, but that feels more like working out all the loose ends and making threads that go through different pieces more visible and more strong. The conference was also good to start thinking about the post-PhD life – reflecting on what topics and people I was drawn to helps to get a feeling of where I’ll be heading next.

I hope to be able to write on some of the themes in more detail, so just the highlights to remember what to write about (I may also come back and edit this post with more ideas and links):

• a distinction between friendship-based and interest-based participation and learning in a keynote by Mimi Ito (notes by Axel Bruns), loosely corresponding to maintaining existing connections and creating new ones
• thinking about online places – their differences from physical places and co-presence as a way of constructing them – and ways of studying (in) them
  • communities, online places and participation; multiple places + multi-membership
  • experienced as an individual and implications for research and practice
• learning: community-based, (duad) relation-based, artefact-based?
• different ways to look at privacy: episodes, aggregations over time, patterns, lifestreaming triangulations
• blogs
  • blogs as transitional objects (find the paper!)
  • exploring identity and constructing identity in one space; changes over time
  • crafts online and research on mommy-blogging (loved to see research done on things I am exposed to via non-work blog reading)
• researching fast changing fields – audiences and expectations (later:
  Research results as yesterday’s news, audiences and expectations)

Twitter notes from two ‘communities’ session on the last day are here.

• Researcher vs. blogger: researcher influence
• Ethnography: being there with critical perspective
• On book writing

Just finished and submitted :)

Efimova, L. (2008). Blending blogging into an academic text. Paper submitted IN THE GAME: Ethnographic relationships, mediation and knowledge, workshop at Internet Research 9.0, Copenhagen, Denmark, 15-18 October 2008.

Abstract. For my research blogging has been a blessing and a curse. While it has turned into a set of research practices that brought rich results, it also resulted in a search for methodologically sound ways to justify those practices, put me into a struggle of being a researcher and a blogger at the same time, and challenged everything I knew about academic writing. As I work on the chapters of my PhD dissertation, blending blogging into an academic text to bringing together the blogger and the researcher in me, this paper provides an opportunity to reflect on this process. I start from introducing my research and the roles blogging played in it, and then discuss bringing my own weblog in the dissertation through autoethnography and confessional writing as well as the challenges of representing other bloggers in the text of it.

Looking forward to the workshop – the list of the workshop participants and their papers is intriguing…

• Personal effectiveness, improvement.ru and boundary spanning
• Knowledge worker paradox (2)
• Papers on awareness

While doing other things I’m in the middle of post-AOIR thinking on research methodologies, ethics and researcher’s responsibilities. I have to do all those other things, but I’m pretty sure that this thinking will surface in writing, sooner or later.

But so far just a quote from Annette Markham (Ethics as method: A case for reflexivity (.pdf)):

Good qualitative research, online or off,
is not difficult to find or access,
it is difficult to formalize.

Good research, online or off,
is hard work.

Good research comes from the heart.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/10/12.html#a1693; comments are here.

• Things that don’t fit
• Citing from internet
• Notes on my PhD methodology: introduction

The conference has a really great set of papers. Due to lack of wifi and presentation anxiety for two days I wasn’t blogging much, so I decided just to make a list of papers that I consider interesting. Extended abstracts are online, some papers are online as well (requires AOIR membership, but it 200% worth it).

[I'm working on the list - it's still updated. If you don't want to wait check http://del.icio.us/mathemagenic/AOIR+papers]

Trena Paulus & Vanessa Dennen, Weblogs as spontaneous mentoring mechanism for academics – very good overview of “Profworld” academic blogging community (qualitative, with examples) and discussion on how mentoring takes place there (really hope that paper or slides will be online)

Jenna Burrell, Telling Stories of Internet Fraud: how word-of-mouth shapes Internet use in Accra, Ghana – I missed the presentation as I had to be somewhere else, but I fun of listening to her stories from Ghana over food and the paper is great

katrina jungnickel, Ways of seeing and researching the blog – on 73 urban journeys, visual and textual, as well as blogs in research (with lots to discuss in comparision with my own work)

Jang Hyun Kim, Blog as an oppositional medium?: A Semantic Network Analysis on the Iraq War Blogs

Jia Lin, Alex Halavais, Blogs as indicators of social relationships in the US

Alice Marwick, “I’m a Lot More Interesting than a Friendster Profile”: Identity Presentation, Authenticity and Power in Social Networking Services

Ericka Menchen Trevino, Blogger motivations: Power, pull, and positive feedback (full text is here) – a study on blogging motivations between college students. I was especially fascinated by the framing the results on negotiating anonymity and Ericka was very nice to blog it

Trena Paulus, Vanessa Dennen, The next generation of research methods for online collaborative learning environments

Tags: aoir, aoir6

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/10/08.html#a1687; comments are here.

• Uncovering the implicit
• Hidden agenda
• Tools to find similarity between two texts (weblog and papers)

Long promised – our (still work in progress) with Stephanie Hendrick and Anjo Anjewierden :

Abstract. Although weblogs are perceived as low-threshold tools to publish online, empowering individual expression in public, there is growing evidence of social structures evolving around weblogs and their influence on norms and practices of blogging. Emerging from connections between weblogs and their authors, weblog communities often do not have a shared space, clear boundaries, or clear membership, challenging researchers who want to study them. Initially intended to be a study in the delineation of weblog boundaries, the scope of defining these boundaries immediately overwhelmed traditional methods and tools. The problems that arose from using traditional link mining methods led to an exploration of alternative approaches of defining these communities. The purpose of this paper is to get an insight into methods of finding “life between buildings”: virtual settlements where weblog communities may reside. We use Jones’ (1997) theory of a virtual settlement and archaeological metaphor to address research challenges of locating weblog communities, suggest an iterative approach that includes refinement of research methods based on assumptions about community norms, practices and artefacts, and propose which artefacts could serve as indicators of community presence. Finally we present a pilot study which explores different methods of identifying community membership beginning with a known core member of a group of knowledge management bloggers.

More:

• longer abstract and authors info
• presentation (.ppt)
• paper (.pdf)
• this is an update on the earlier paper (In search for a virtual settlement: An exploration of weblog community boundaries); introductory section is very similar, but the rest is pretty new)

I’m running right now, but will add a few links a bit later one as well as talk about most interesting things we found last weeks in the blog (in case you are too lazy to read the paper).

Tags: aoir, aoir6

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/10/07.html#a1686; comments are here.

• Apprenticeship in weblog networks
• Blogademia – weblog research blog by Scott Nowson
• AOIR: my selection of papers

I’m presenting today: Not documenting, doing: blogging as research (slides). It’s heavily related to my presentation in June, but goes a bit further.

Tags: aoir, aoir6

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/10/06.html#a1684; comments are here.

• More on reading weblogs
• Researching blogs and blogging research: synergies of colliding worlds
• Blogging as breathing or how to find time for blogging?

Still feeling strange about blogging and blinded review issue… This time I had to make choice about posting online my submissions for Internet Research 6.0: Generations. I asked at AOIR mailing list, got a bit of discussion, an official recommendation and decided to wait till review is over.

Still, it feels very strange. I’m pretty sure that if a reviewer happens to read my weblog, he or she would know that it’s me behind the proposals…

Anyway, one of the proposals is really scary – since I’m on a very shaky ground there and it’s not co-authored. But I’m happy I wrote it. I’d be excited if it gets through: last year conference gave me impression that AOIR is a great place to discuss unsettled work-in-progress ideas. If not – pain of articulating ideas will pay back anyway.

This post also appears on channel AOIR

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/02/21.html#a1500; comments are here.

• More on blogging and research
• AOIR: Finding ‘the life between buildings’: An approach for defining a weblog community
• Researching weblogs and blogging research: podcasts

This is the second piece on time in blogging and it’s about time in reading weblogs (you may want to read the first one – Time in blogging: catching a moment to write).

To start with: a piece from our paper on distributed apprenticeship

Next to the real-time interaction and learning that weblog networks can facilitate, they have an interesting potential as a mean to “preserve” authentic experiences over time, so future generations of employees can learn from them. While real-time reading of a weblog seems to provide a good view of blogger practices illustrated with unfolding stories, it is not clear if these effects would persist while reading a weblog written several years (or even months) ago.

This question came back during Jill’s talk on distributed narratives and made me thinking about (at least) two dimensions of time.

First, there is a writer’s time: weblogs stories often do not come as one piece, but instead emerge as a results of narrating personal life, thinking, bits and pieces of conversation with self. Of course, you can make it more complex and add other dimensions of Jill’s distributed narratives, distributed space and authorship, and then end up with conversations with others and blogosphere stories. In any of these cases writing is distributed over time.

Second, I’d think of a reader’s time: time of reading a story distributed over time (by writers). Reader’s time could be distributed and (almost) synchronous with writer’s time: for example, me reading Jill’s posts over months, almost as soon as she writes them, or following a weblog conversation as it is unfolds. But it’s not necessary: I could go to the archives and read everything at once or (given tools that we don’t have) go through a weblog conversation a few months after it finished, collapsing writers’ time at a moment of reading, so it’s not that distributed any more.

So, to be more specific, this post is about readers’ time, distributed/synchronous or collapsed. I woke up with it today, thinking about differences between those two. So far I can think about two: gradual learning and participation.

It’s not a secret that learning takes time, but in many cases learning also requires time distributed over time. For example, one week of intensive training in a gym wouldn’t bring you the same results as an hour every other day for a year. I guess there are many other cases where you need gradual learning, so your brain or body has time in between to absorb and adjust.

Participation is another difference. Think of watching news vs. watching a documentary. Documentary is about history that you can’t change (of course you can, but it’s another story :), while news are about something that happens now, so it makes much more sense to do something about it. Or – as news is not an “actionable” example for many – there is a difference between watching your child putting metal in a microwave and finding it out (here) a few years later.

Coming back to weblogs. Regular reading of a weblog (distributed/synchronous time) is about gradual learning and opportunities for participation (that’s why some people so addicted to their RSS readers :)

Of course, I can go on writing about implications it has for conversations, relation building and weblog research, but probably I have to take time to think of it making my writer’s time distributed :)

This post also appears on channels weblog research and AOIR

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/09/28.html#a1362; comments are here.

• Getting more by reading less blogs: some thoughts on ‘Cost-Effective Outbreak Detection in Networks’
• Perseus weblog study (2)
• How blogging makes my life difficult

There is at least one nice effect of not being able to blog a conference: over time bits and pieces start to merge revealing underlying themes and turning reporting into reflecting.

This time it’s about time. Somehow different things get together: BlogWalk discussion on a need for time to blog before getting new ideas, AOIR session on time and responsiveness, Jill’s talk about time as one dimension of distributed narratives, time of not being able to blog, time to process blog post piling up in my news aggregator…

I guess I’ll do a couple of posts. This one is about time in writing a weblog (see also Time in blogging: writers time and readers time).

Alex Halavais on not blogging (and go there to read the rest and to see new t-shirt of Professor Walker :)

During one of the sessions on the last day of the conference, Nancy Baym, president of AIR, suggested that someone was going to set up a web page with postings related to the conference. This followed her request at one of the keynotes that people write up their notes and post them to the AIR-L list. I noted that Lilia had already set up a Topic Exchange channel to collect bloggers’ thoughts. At the end of the conference, I ran into Nancy again at Falmer Station. She noted that most of the posts so far were just complaining about the lack of access. “Don’t worry,” I said, “when people get back to somewhere with access they’ll post.” As I watched her cross over to the other platform, I thought: what a stupid thing to say.

When people get back to wherever they are going, chances are good that their minds will have switched gears and they will have more current things to post about. I am sitting on notes not only about AIR (which I will post since they are required reading for a class I’m teaching), but on notes from a conference on Informatics a week earlier. Blogging, as a practice, tends for many people to be off the cuff, and the values of timeliness that apply to journalists everywhere apply even moreso to bloggers; we operate on a 30 minute news cycle. I think it’s fair to assume that under those conditions, most people won’t post-post the conference.

Thinking about my own experiences I guess Alex is right: time is crucial. Being able to blog real-time (even almost real-time: no wifi, but connection during breaks) changes my motivation to write, adding a flavour of instant gratification of “serving the world” with current news that makes me writing a bit more, a bit better and investing in finishing posts.

It’s different when I can’t post. I still make notes, but do not spend time making them into something more or less finished, they pile up, I hope to work them out later, but it doesn’t happen often. I guess there are two reasons:

• When “instant gratification” is not there it’s about discipline it takes to finish notes (of course if there are no other “drivers” as Alex’ example of his blog posts as required reading for a class).
• It’s also about making an effort of delaying new things that come and wait for your attention. Like now, I feel like finishing and posting my notes from AOIR, but there are other things to do, so I’ll be lucky if I manage to write an overview of most important things (fingers crossed: if it doesn’t happen within next few days the time is lost).

There is another aspect of being able to blog. For me blogging is as much about releasing ideas from my brain as about reporting interesting news to others. I blog bits and pieces of ideas to get rid of them on the path to what I want/need/have to do in the moment.

For example, now I really want to work on a paper on personal KM, but I have all these ideas about time, weblog research and corporate blogging on the way. I don’t want to lose them and I can’t switch to something else when they are still on my mental radar (so much that I woke up with ideas for blog posts :), so I’m blogging instead of working on the paper. In this case blogging is pretty much similar to filing things into 43 folders (see also: Getting Things Done) so they get out of your way :)

This post also appears on channels BlogWalk and AOIR

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/09/27.html#a1361; comments are here.

• Paper: Blending blogging into an academic text
• The best part…
• Most common words of BlogWalk participants

Listening to Ted Nelson and to discussions about his keynote made me realized once again that I’m not well connected to the field of internet research yet: I had no idea who he was :) Anyway, he was talking about “my” things, so I was able to connect easily.

The main Ted’s thesis is that “today’s computer world is based on techy misunderstandings of human life and human thought…” He suggests that current computing is based on a paper metaphor of a document and hierarchy as a way to organize documents.

Ted says that “documents are representations of human thoughts” and that they are supposed to facilitate travel of ideas from one person to another, at the moment or over time. I can’t agree more with my “artifacts as knowledge representations” :) Ted argues that using paper metaphor for designing how computers work with documents doesn’t fit the way we think and communicate as “paper is a prison that holds thought”. He talks about parallel thinking instead of hierarchy.

Of course, Ted goes into discussing an alternative, talking about transliterature and showing a few prototypes (I’ll dig out links once I get more time online). In brief it comes to “true hypertext”, with bidirectional links and transclusions.

Although I share Ted’s understanding of problems with current ways of organizing documents, I don’t think that solutions that he envisions would work. He is criticizing tech-geeks developing interfaces too complex for a normal people, but he does the same in another dimension (I’d call him mind-geek ;) by proposing easy interfaces that require complex mental structures. For me it comes to the discussion with Adrian Miles in Lugano, where he admitted that not many people are able to appreciate “true hypertext” literature.

Ted suggests that he aims to develop a system that allows people to use computers to support their thinking and says that it would be flexible enough to accommodate as much structure as a user would want. Again, I agree with need for more flexibility, but I’m not sure how easy it will be for people to use: Word has enough features to be flexible, but most of the users use just a few, sticking to uses and metaphors they are familiar with.

One of Ted’s demos allowed you to browse through multidimensional relations in a very nice way, but then (again :) those relations has to be defined by a user explicitly. I’d say there are at least two problems with it. First, explicit effort to define relation usually do not work (people do not add metadata). Second, most relations are not explicit, but fuzzy and multidimensional as well.

And, to finish with criticism, Ted haven’t said much about social life of documents and how it could be reflected in the systems he proposes.

Despite all my disagreements I like it a lot. Ted is engaging and mind provoking speaker, so I’m going to look into his work more…

This post also appears on channel AOIR

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/09/20.html#a1357; comments are here.

• AOIR: Not documenting, doing: blogging as research
• Time in blogging: catching a moment to write
• AOIR 5.0: Bloggers