Blogging
Glossary blogging glossary.doc
Unit 1
BLOGGING – AN INTRODUCTION
Blogging Introduction Trainer Notes blogging trainer notes.doc
(see also Unit 2: blogging management)
1. What is a blog?
A Web log, or ‘blog’ is a type of website in which the author or authors of the site regularly post entries in a similar fashion to a diary or a journal. The vast majority of blogs are in fact used for exactly this purpose – as a sort of electronic journal of their personal lives. As these diaries are of limited interest to anyone beyond the author’s family and friends, many of these – although not all – are unknown.
A blog will typically include text, images, and links to other websites, but the focus tends to be on text. A number of bloggers incorporate audio, video and other forms of content on their blogs, but these elements require more advanced technical experience. People post to their blogs once every fortnight or so, every week, every day, or even a number of times a day. Their postings can be as long as essays or just a few words long. Most posts, however tend to be just a few paragraphs.
The blogs that have larger audiences tend to focus not on their daily lives, but on subjects with wider interests: politics, music, cooking, sport, and technology - although there are almost as many possible topics as there are blogs. Businesses, NGOs, politicians and government departments often also use blogs to keep their members, employees, and customers up to date with ongoing developments in their organisations.
Exercise:
Has anybody read a blog before? What are the blogs you’ve read?
[Trainer should have a typical blog on screen that he or she has found. Have participants read through a blog posting to get a sense of a typical entry and the distinction between a blog and a normal website]
2. What do you need to know before you can start blogging?
The attraction of blogging is the simplicity of publishing a website.
The various blogging services, or blog hosts, have very simple interfaces and the capability of hosting all a blogger’s content. This means that anyone with even only a limited level of computer literacy can have a blog up and running in minutes with little to no training. Users need not have knowledge of web design, html or ftp. As long as a user knows how to use a word processor and a web browser, he or she can blog.
3. What does a blog post look like?
[Trainer should have a typical blog on screen that he or she has found in order to point out the following aspects of a blog. Try to find a blog that is simple and text focussed without advanced features such as audio or video entries, but with a handful of images. Trainer will point out the title, body, permalink, etc. as he or she explains the different attributes]
All blog postings have the following:
- a title - describing what the blog post is about
- the body – some paragraphs of text on whatever topic the blogger wants.
- the permalink – the URL, or web address of the particular post
- the date and time the post has been published on the blog
Many blog postings also have:
- comments – where readers of the blog can append their comments or opinion on what has been written in the blog posting
- images or photographs somewhere in the body of the text
- links to other websites or blogs
- a blogroll – a list of other blogs that the blog author thinks likely to be of interest to those who appreciate his or her blog.
[The blog itself will also have an RSS or Atom feed for content syndication. It is also very common for blogs to be signed up to statistics services that track how many people have visited, where they are from, and a range of other reader attributes. This unit does not go into any detail about web feeds or blog stats services. These concepts are explained in detail in the ‘Blog Management’ unit.]
4. Why are comments important?
[Trainer should click on the comments section of the above blog posting as she or he explains. Try to find a comments box with around four or five comments, but no more or fewer, so that the participants get an idea of how comments are catalysts for conversations and the development of communities, but not so many that it would take too long to read them all]
The comments readers leave at the bottom of a post (or in a pop-up window) create a dialogue between the author of the blog and his or her readers. The readers and the blog author can agree, disagree, hold an extended argument or discussion, suggest other websites related to the original blog posting, become friends, flirt, collaborate on work or anything else that any other human conversation allows.
When journalists publish articles in a newspaper, it takes a couple of days to receive feed-back to what they have written in the form of letters to the editor. With a blog posting, readers can comment within seconds of a posting being published. This immediacy of interaction within blog comments is one of blogging’s biggest attractions.
Bloggers with similar interests often link to each other or to each other’s blog posts and comment within each other’s comment boxes. These links and comments over time tend to create communities of like-minded individuals that may otherwise not have met one another due to barriers of geographic distance or other, socially-constructed barriers.
Exercise:
Have a read through a few of the comments, then have each of the participants post their own comment.
5. What exactly is this thing called the ‘blogosphere’ and why am I always reading about blogs in the newspaper?
[Optional: Trainer may want to have copies of a clipping from a local newspaper, perhaps from a columnist or editorial, that makes mention of what a blogger has said, and have the participants read through the article. The aim here is to make participants aware of the growing influence of the blogosphere]
The ‘blogosphere’ is the term used to describe the entire realm of blogs and blog content on the web and the interconnections and communities that exist therein. However, the term is often used in the popular press in the context of the blogosphere’s growing influence politically and as a tastemaker.
The simplicity of blog publishing has allowed millions of individuals who historically may not have had access to printing presses or TV broadcasting systems to publish for virtually no cost to a potentially mass audience. Web surfers can just as easily visit an individual’s blog as they can the Guardian or the New York Times note to trainer – replace ‘the Guardian’ and ‘the New York Times’ with locally known publications.
A number of blogs have become so popular that their readership outstrips that of many newspapers and magazines. These top ranking blogs can thus sometimes have as much clout as traditional print publications in terms of affecting the political agenda, influencing consumer spending or criticism of literature, music, film or other cultural products.
However, most blogs never reach this level of recognition. Nonetheless, one can never know when one’s blog will be rocketed to the forefront of popular awareness. For example, by the summer of 2004 in Ukraine, a number of bloggers had been writing for some time about their concerns over the lack of democracy in their country, but very few people indeed had read much of what they had written. However, in the winter the demonstrations against the government grew and readers around the world wanted to know more about what was going on in the country, and many of these Ukrainian blogs received massive readerships overnight.
This ‘mass amateurisation’ of publishing delivers a substantial challenge to the editors of traditional print media as the gatekeepers of opinion and information. At the same time, we must remember that bloggers are most often one-person operations, and there are no fact-checkers, proofreaders or editors to ensure accuracy and veracity.
Exercise:
Do you think you can trust what you read on a blog? Why / why not? Do you think you can trust what you read in a newspaper? Why / why not?
What makes anything you read trustworthy? [If necessary or desirable, the trainer could prompt the participants about such concepts as opinion vs. fact, ‘objectivity’, referencing other ‘trusted’ sources, primary vs. secondary sources, etc., while making clear that ‘opinion’ is not necessarily incompatible with ‘truth’.]
6. Blogging for development
Blogs do not just have to be used to publish political commentary or movie reviews. Blogs can be used to track learning curves of participants at a conference or training course. They can be used to track and publicise developments in a certain area or subject. A multi-author blog can be used within an organisation to aid collaboration in general or on a particular project. And at its most simple, a blog can be a diary or personal journal, which in itself is enormously empowering.
Examples:
the following examples need to be fleshed out
Somebody Lastname in Papua New Guinea is the author of Papgren ? blog, which works as a clearinghouse of all news and developments related to genetic resources in the Pacific ??? He posts on at least a weekly basis links to news items and research and drafts short commentaries on the subject. As the only resource on the web performing such a task, the site is enormously useful for ????
Example of institutional use of blog for internal collaboration ???
Example of blog use in educational context.
Example of Eastern Europe blog mentoring programme.
Add specific local dev blogging examples.
Exercise:
Brainstorm a list of possible uses you can imagine for a blog. What would you use a blog for?
7. Health warning – possible dangers and constraints of blogging
Democracy activists, women’s and gay rights campaigners in Iran have found blogging to be an incredibly powerful tool to disperse information amongst themselves and to the wider world. At the same time, bloggers there and in other countries have been arrested or worse for their writings.
Elsewhere, workers have used their blogs to speak out about poor working conditions or other issues at work. For other workers facing similar problems, this is a powerful tool for building solidarity and knowledge sharing. However, here too, every few months there is another story in the press about an employee being sacked for what they have written on their blog.
Remember that blogging is still publishing, even if you only have five readers. Publishing anything is a powerful thing indeed and very different from having a conversation with five trusted friends. Anyone can read what you have written. The legal standing of bloggers in different jurisdictions has yet to be established. Do bloggers have the same rights and responsibilities as journalists? Are they subject to libel laws?
Blogging can be addictive
Exercise:
What are some of the problems you could imagine bloggers might have in publishing their content? What are some of the problems you could imagine you might encounter with your blog?
Extras
Finding (good/relevant) blogs
Choosing a blog hosting service
OPTION: Final Exercise to create a test blog blogging exercise
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