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@univ200mastersvm
The founding mother of the blog revolution, Movable Type's Mena Trott, talks about the early days of blogging, when she realized that giving regular people the power to share our lives online is the key to building a friendlier, more connected world.
Final Project Overview
Blogging positively impacts identity formation because:
It supports existing, offline social circles (friendship is vital to adolescent development, and online interaction helps maintain these friendships through self-disclosure).
It allows adolescents to explore and experiment with their identity while also getting feedback from peers. This is especially helpful for young people who are shy or awkward in the real world.
Adolescents can create a narrative of their lives and reflect on events and their own thoughts and feelings.
Before and After of Introductory Paragraph
Before: Beginning as early as middle school, I became an avid blogger. I had online journals on several sites; some secret, some not so secret, with dozens of spectators reading about both my life and my innermost thoughts. These allowed my adolescent self a safe space to record and think about my experiences and feelings, as well as a way to look back at how much I changed over the years. To some, this may seem like an invasion of privacy to let others read such personal details, but blogging has become a much more popular pastime in the decade since I began my online journey. Blogging allows users to document their day-to-day experiences, read and relate to other users (often both real-life acquaintances and friends made online), and control how they present themselves to the world. Comments and “liking” blog posts allows friends to lend support in hard times and give kudos during times of triumph, making blogs more social than ever before. Social networking websites allow casual users to become more familiar with blogging, making this activity more and more popular. The research suggests that blogging has a positive effect on identity formation because it supports social support systems, identity experimentation, and reflection on one’s emotional and social growth.
After: Beginning as early as middle school, I became an avid blogger. I had online journals on several sites; some secret, some not so secret, allowing readers to learn about events my life as well as my innermost thoughts. Posting on a blog allowed my adolescent self a safe space to record and think about my experiences and feelings, as well as a way to look back at how much I changed over the years. To some, this may seem like an invasion of privacy to let others (even complete strangers!) read such personal details; however, blogging has become a much more popular pastime in the decade since I began my online journey. Blogging allows users to document their day-to-day experiences, read and respond to other users (often a mix of real-life acquaintances and friends made online), and control how they present themselves to the world. Comments and “liking” blog posts allows friends to lend support in hard times and give kudos during times of triumph, making blogs more social than ever before. The research suggests that blogging has a positive effect on identity formation because it supports social interactions, identity experimentation, and reflection on one’s emotional growth.
A bit of explanation: I moved the bit about social networking sites to a different section where I explained the mechanics of blogs in more detail. I cleaned up my thesis which was a bit repetitive, and generally tried to make it sound less like garbage.
Unit III Summary
As I wrote my Unit III essay, one challenge was finding counterclaims to my thesis. All of the research I encountered supported that blogging strengthened social bonds and influenced identity formation, or at the very least reflected it. The closest I could come to was Mazur and Kozarian's claim that blogs are more reflective than social; however this still allows bloggers to explore their identity and reflect on their own growth. Any real negative social effects came about from bloggers either lying about information or revealing socially stigmatized characteristics (mental illness, controversial opinions, etc). For the most part, bloggers are honest about their lives and experiences. Reading others' blogs and allowing their friends to access their blogs constitutes a social activity which strengthens friendships and supplements the interactions that happen offline. Constructing a narrative of one's life helps identity formation and allows reflection on one's own growth. All of this evidence supported my thesis and validated my own personal experiences of blogging as a teenager and even as an emerging adult.
Synthesis project
My diigo account with annotated sources.
Unit II Summary
To find sources for unit II, I largely relied on the VCU Libraries search and used articles available online. I used many search criteria, including "blog* AND self*" and "blog* AND identity AND social*", which were two of the most helpful. Truncating words proved to be a helpful tool-- thanks for the tip, librarians!
Many of the articles I retrieved were from psychology or adolescent development journals, understandably. Others were from technology or information/communication periodicals.
I went through each article and tried to pick up the important points or good quotes/tidbits to help further my point, or even things that might contradict my thesis. I also tried to focus on themes that tied my research together, such as socialization and online/offline parallelism.
Unit I: The Tumblr Essay
My critical analysis essay was based on Tumblr. This was challenging as tumblr as a whole has not changed much over the years. Yes, the layout is a bit different, but the concept and use of the site is basically the same. It took some digging to really pinpoint how blogging has changed. Mobile capabilities are becoming more integrated and different formats (video and audio posts, as well as pictures) are more popular than ever, reflecting the visual nature of social media recently-- hence the popularity of websites like Instagram and Vine. I emphasized that, while Tumblr is a social site, many users are hesitant to connect with other social media sites because of this image of Tumblr as a safe-haven for young people away from the "mainstream" where their parents and grandparents are beginning to use the internet. This has created sort of a cult atmosphere with inside jokes and weird humor not understood elsewhere.
Unfortunately, this didn't help much on the final paper, as I wasn't allowed to use research to back any of my assertions up. It did, however, get me thinking about why blogging is so popular and what exactly I gain from this strange website community.