New Media Personal Ad

Beginning next week, you'll design and author a website. Any website worth a reader's time has an implicit argument: buy this brand of clothing, hire me/our company to work for you, join this organization, read more novels by said author, Keith Richards is the best guitarist alive, the disappearance of the horned toad in North Dakota is a travesty, etc. While these arguments have varying degrees of importance, they are, nonetheless, arguments. Your goal here is to find someone in the new media class with whom you can develop an interesting argument that you both care about.

To find a web design project partner, post a comment in response to this post in which you include:

• Your name
• (3-5) website topics of interest to you> these might be areas of interest, world/scientific/philosophical or artist problems, or even more practical concerns (creating a site for the bike co-op you just started).
• Skills you'll bring to the table (technical, visual, writing etc.)

We'll begin having project conferences next week.

Blog Post #4 - Experimenting with Visual Arguments

For this post, you're going to apply some of the ideas we've discussed with regard to text and image. Your goal is to create a visual argument that is accompanied by a limited amount of text (think Sweet Flypaper of Life--significantly more images than text). Hopefully, this exercise will get you to think and compose visually in a way that you haven't before.

1.) Decide on a political, economic, personal, cultural, or educational concern that you'd like to make a statement about. The more specific your concern, the more focused your argument will be. For example, guns are bad is a broad concern. Congress should pass legislation to require a thirty day waiting period in all states is more specific. But your statement certainly doesn't have to be that weighty.

2.) Collect and post a series of images on your blog that address your concern and make a clear statement about it.

3.) Consider the following as you assemble your visual argument:

• How many images to use, what order to put them in, how large/small each one should be.
• How each image relates to the one before and after it and to the argument as a whole.
  
• Where to put text--on top of an image (a la Perez Hilton), below/above each image, only with select images, only at the beginning?
• How the text you select expands, narrows, contradicts, or confuses the content of the picture.
• The color and font of the text used in your argument.
  

4.) Write a paragraph following your visual argument that explains the choices you made and difficulties you ran into. Consider referring to ideas from Berger and Rose as you do this.

Image from http://www.martinelkort.com/photographs/abstracts/Number4.jpg

New Media Picks of the Week

The Eye by Salvador Dali

This week my selections will, of course, focus on blogs. Most of my picks are highly visual in nature--meaning with a focus on images rather than text, since we're moving into a week centered on all things visual. What is your experience of these blogs whose content is almost entirely visual? What meaning do you make from them? Feel free to comment.

Ego Pimp includes large photographs with intense color, many of which tell a story.

Bottom of the Eye also has photos that take up the entire screen. This blog and the previous one get me wondering about the difference between a photo blog and an online photo gallery. Temporality seems an important consideration--posting nearly every day (blog) versus putting up examples of your best work (gallery).

Photo of the Day has a more photojournalistic bent. All the images are selected by editors of Photo District News, a publication for photography professionals. The layout of the images with captions beneath feels very newspapery.

365 portraits - The clean, simple visual delivery of the images on this blog let the pictures speak for themselves. We get only the subject's name and a picture title.

Blood Orphans Blog - Is it a real blog? Are they a real band? Read for yourself and decide. We could ask the same thing about any blog out there--right? Such is the anonymity of the Internet. Read far enough back in the posts and you might see an image of someone you recognize.

The Purpose of Your Blog

In class on Thursday, someone said something to the effect that "in real life" no one would read their new media blog (NMB). This statement implies that the blogs you're creating for class have less validity than a "real" blog--one that is generated out of your passion and interest in a topic (the latest developments in molecular physics, the video game Doom, Michelle Obama's wardrobe choices etc.). I think it's less a question of validity and more about purpose. While the content of your NWB is somewhat shaped by what I ask you to do for each post, the overall purpose of these blogs does not differ dramatically from "real" blogs: to create an online conversation about a topic with a community of interested individuals.

But the other underlying purpose of your NMB does make it a sort of strange endeavor, I admit. It is a display of learning that will be assessed. And this fact alters the act of writing--whether you're writing an essay, short story, or journal entry. It affects voice, choice of content, and your sense of your audience. But with regard to audience, at least you have the benefit of a built in readership, something a blog about the joys of kayaking might not have, at least immediately.

The question I'm left with is: would it be more effective for your learning process about blogs to have complete freedom over your blog posts rather having the blog serve as a kind of reading journal? Your comments are welcome.

I understand the weirdness of blogging as it's connected to this class. I do. This blog has a very specific purpose and readership. I'm sharing information and ideas with 19 students to extend the conversation that goes on in class. So, yes, my purpose and readership is a bit more narrow than Bug Girl's, but given the general reaction to her blog, I'm guessing you're all okay with that.

Blog Post #3 Categories of Blogs/ Evaluation

We're going to travel a little deeper into the blogosphere. If you'd like to get really lost, click here and go to Technorati (you will want to be familiar with what this site is about). But if you'd like to know what to do for Tuesday, read on. You're going to view and evaluate one blog from each of the following categories:

Politics/ News

Entertainment/Arts

Lifestyle- fashion, cooking, etc.

Science/Technology

To view your specific blog options, go to ctools>
Resources>the blogosphere and your place in it> Blog evaluation.

The point of this blog evaluation is for you to think more deeply about blogging conventions with regard to specific types of blogs and compare types within the blog genre. In your evaluation, you'll look at four blogs. Write on one blog from each category listed above that I have linked to in the Blog Evaluaton folder or use only 3 of my picks and bring in a 4th blog of your choice. Also feel free to make reference in your post to other blogs that fall into these categories. Questions to address in your evaluation are below:

• What seem to be the conventions of the blogs in each category? Are there any you can identify? For example, does the art blog present itself in a particular way? Use more images? Have a particular layout? Use text differently than a news blog?
• What do you notice about the similarities and differences in these blogs especially as they relate to the balance of image and text, use of color and font, layout/navigation, authorship/credibility?

• How does the argumentation differ from one blog category to the next? How are images used differently in those arguments?
  
• How do the comments on the blog contribute to the complexity of the blog's argument? Or detract from it?

Blog Post #2 - Evaluating Academic Blogs

For Thursday you'll write a post in which you evaluate three academic blogs. I've posted links to several blogs that I consider academic in the Resources/The Blogosphere and Your Place In it/Academic Blogs folder. Please be familiar with all the blogs, but you need only evaluate three of them in your post. Questions to consider in your blog post:

• How does each blog visually convey a sense of its purpose and tone?
• Does/how does the blogger establish credibility in his/her posts?
• What do you notice about the depth and complexity with which the blog explores ideas?
• How does the blog encourage visual thinking, if at all? Examine the use of images, hyperlinks, and video in this blog. How are these elements used? Is their use effective? Do they overwhelm, inform or highlight the text?
• Who is the intended readership? How can you tell?
• What do you notice about the comments made on this blog?
• How would you characterize the blogger's voice? What makes it interesting, boring, unique, or informed? Do the visual elements contribute to the voice? How?
• Feel free to compare the blogs, especially in terms of their "academicness."
  

Inauguration Week New Media

New Media Relevant Picks of the Week

In honor of the presidential inauguration, I want to highlight Barack Obama's use of new media. He periodically gives twitter updates--well, let's be real--his handlers give the updates. But they seem to be useful in giving us the impression that he's a man of the people who wants to remain connected to us. Obama has promised the American people a weekly presidential address on Youtube. Is this use of media significantly different from the presidential radio addresses of the past? Will more people hear/view Obama than past presidents? Feel free to comment on Obama's move away from traditional media.

You might also check out this BBC News blog post on how new media is being used by media outlets for the first time at an inauguration. The Center for Civic Media's blog, an MIT collaboration, also has an extensive list of participative new media inaugural opportunities. Sounds like reporters and citizens alike will be blogging, twittering, posting, photographing, and videoing their way through the event. It's a ground-breaking day on more than one front.

Why Would a Pro Write for HuffPo- I post this link in reference to our Huffington Post discussion last class. This professional writer explains why she writes for HuffPo for free. It's not just altruistic journalism....

A Vision of Students Today- This is another video by Kansas State University Professor Michael Wesch who created "The Machine is Us/ing Us. This video looks at students, their lifestyles, and technology today. I'm curious to hear comments on whether or not the video gets at issues relevant to the undergraduate experience at UM.

Digital Ethnography- Prof. Michael Wesch's blog and website which examine the use of technology in society from an anthropological angle.

Blog Post #1 - The Nature of Blog

The word "blog" is quite new to our language and serves as both a noun and a verb. Already it has other forms--blogginess, blogosphere. I attribute the word's vast use and evolution to the quick proliferation of blogs. As you will/have read, a new blog is created every minute. Astounding.


After reading Sullivan, watching "Your Brain on Blog," and reading "It's the links, stupid," you'll write your first blog post. You may feel like you're flying a little blind and this makes sense. For most of you, this is a new form of writing, a new genre. While you may have read blogs, you have not written one. It's a bit like me asking you to try your hand at writing a sonnet when you've only recently been introduced to that poetic form. So view this first post as an experiment. You're going to be thinking about what tone you want to strike, what your blogging persona is, how much depth you want to go into, how you'll convey your ideas -- text, image, hypertext, video etc. Blogging is inherently experimental because, as Sullivan points out, it's like writing out loud. The form is an incomplete one that I would equte to early stage drafting. Hopefully, your blog and your presentation of yourself as an academic thinker on it will evolve the more you blog. And now, time to be brave and jump off the blogging precipice.

Before writing your first blog, be sure to thoroughly read the blog post guidelines on Ctools in the Resources/The Blogosphere and Your Place in it folder.

Below are some questions to get you started on post #1. You may choose to use one or several of these questions to shape your first entry, but also feel free to take your own approach to discussing how you're thinking about academic blogging (as opposed to journalistic or personal blogging) and responding to Sullivan and the Economist article. You've got great latitude in this form. Don't hesistate to use it.

What assumptions about blogging did you bring to this course?

How are you currently thinking about your blog for this class in terms of purpose?

What concerns do you have about blogging?

How are you thinking about your academic blogging persona?

What idea or ideas from Sullivan were most illuminating? How and why? Anything you'd like to take issue with or expand on?

How is a blog a visual text? If we call it that, what does that term do to the way we as bloggers conceive of our text? (Think about the Sheehan reading--"Being Visual, Visual Beings.")

What questions do you have about the form, specifically as it pertains to academic blogging?

Image from: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/

Get Your Google Reader Rolling

After reading your introductory emails, I've determined we have a pretty new media hungry group in this class. So as the semester chugs along, I'll post relevant online articles and blogs that might be of interest but aren't required reading. Some blogs you might want to subscribe to via RSS feed/ Google Reader, as you did with my blog. To do that, visit a given blog, click on the little orange RSS feed box (located on the Internet provider address bar or somewhere on the blog's homepage) and you're off to the races. Updates will magically appear on your Google Reader page. And if you're not sure how to use Google Reader, there are several youtube video tutorials. New media on a new media application.

image from http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/

New Media Relevant Picks of the Week

Virginia Heffernan's new media blog for the NY Times: The Medium is of interest. This week's entry concerns interactivity and Jimmy Fallon. I had no idea Fallon was so new media (note my adjectival use of the term).

The Barbarian Group: This is the website of the new media marketing group with whom we'll be video conferencing later in the semester. Their site is quite meta in that it uses a few forms of new media within the site--a blog, a play on Wikipedia, etc. Check out their portfolio where a plethora of new media examples live.

For the journalists in the class (and anyone else interested in how news on the Internet became "participative", you'll want to read "Out of Print: The Death and Life of the American Newspaper" from The New Yorker.

Whopper Sacrifice: I have to admit that the Barbarians turned me on to this site. It's an interesting example of a company using two forms of new media marketing--online interactive advertising and social networking (Facebook). Genius and hip.