Module 2 summary
In module 2, for topic about the blog, after reading Rebecca Blood, I really liked her quote, ‘I strongly believe in the power of weblogs to transform both writers and readers from “audience” to “public” and from “consumer” to “creator.” ;. (Blood, 2000). There are many blog pages in WWW, using the web 2.0 technology it is rather easy to created. But the main I see many blog pages are used as personal journal or just like old days - as their personal websites. I can’t really say there are rules on you can have or not to have the blog pages, but to me the choice of subject matters the most. Also the theme on the blog pages, and the article the writers are writing – they all have to be relate to the theme and purpose of their blog page.
Rettberg talks about blogs facilitating ‘distributed conversations’ and even ‘distributed communities’ – in my point of view any bloggers can read blogs and they can comment on it and even suggested or promote their thought on their blogs. Blogs are there to be read and to be comment on for all kind of communities.
In blackboard discussion board, we have been ask to think the differences/similarity between blogs and wikis.
My understanding on this is, blog site is more self claimed and more of a self journal, created by the blog owners – writing about personal experiences or personal thoughts on subject matters which allows people to view and comment on it – but not allow to change its content by others. For wiki, it has similar concepts with blogs, but the content is not belongs to a creator. It allow other users to edit and take part on the subject matters – more of group work.
Also we have learn about wiki sites. I support the concept behind the Wiki - the collaboration of many users of the site editing the content of the subject matters for better explanation and descriptions. Watching YouTube video of the London bombing page in the Wikipedia site on the course content show us wiki content is changing constantly by wiki users. It raise me a question - does wiki pages can be used as a reference?
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/wikipedia-hoax-fools-newspapers/story-e6frfku0-1225710441165 - After I read this article, I can see how many people (even the news papers) do take the Wikipedia content as legitimate. But the page can be edited by anyone without any validation . The Mr. Fitzgerald told the newspaper he picked Wikipedia because it was something a lot of journalists look at and it can be edited by anyone. This also shows the danger of use the wiki as a source that can be used as statement - unless it’s been confirm by the proven sources.
In the article by Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison, they stated that “SNSs is akin to “social grooming.” (boyd & Ellison, 2007). I didn’t really agree on his argument as SNSs can never replicate the real offline relationship and interaction between people. My understanding of SNS is, individual people’s online page (e.g. Face book profile page) been connected and linked with other users page and together created a network. It has to have the associated ’links’ such as offline friends, work friends, same club and school. people keep finding this ‘links’ and create this massive complex social network.
References
Blood, R. (2000). “Weblogs: a history and perspective”
Retrieve February 1, 2010 : http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html
boyd, d. m., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11.
Retrieve February 1, 2010: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html
