the point
So yeah, there’s many different reasons to blog, yada yada. Really, there’s just one and as we (bloggers) get used to blogging and move on to year 3,4,5, of it the shine wears off and a lot of us forget it. I love reading a lot of my friends’ blogs but there used to be a lot more posts like this. Thank you, Catherine for giving a wonderful example of the power of indy media. It’s not about personal promotion, it’s not about running your own business and it’s not really about “citizen journalism” (whatever that is). It’s about affirming elements of yourself publicly, sharing yourself with people known to you, and creating/contributing to a conversation that doesn’t get space in any other public spheres/media.
Or maybe I’m just saying this to validate my “gay” post. ;-)
Same difference by Catherine.
For the rest of the people that are in my media neighborhood, I would love to know actually what you think about. I hope you share.
October 15th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Funny you should ask… I’ve been asked to work on a documentary about a very similar subject and after 6 years of blogging, I find it hard to step back and “analyze” the motivations and the goals, especially because they change over time. There seems to be a big period of transition right now for many bloggers. Longs, in-depth posts like the one written by Catherine are crucial to keep blogs interesting. Yet I feel like comments are getting rarer. People seem to want to produce content more than they care to read it. Is it because of all the “entertaining” social networks that showed up in the last year or so? Also, locally, a lot of the interaction seems to be moving offline, with “camp” like gatherings, and smaller communities following up online, with Twitter-style tools.
I think you’re on a very interesting path when you say “sharing yourself with people known to you”…
October 15th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I feel pretty certain that the act of blogging can be explained as a form of narrative therapy. it has a great set of elements in the right mixture to allow for a lot of therapeutic healing. A good balance of empowering (re) authoring tools which allow one to modify the version of oneself, the positive / encouraging regard from ones readers for validation and finally the possibility of gaze from “society” which provides a lot of the energy (because it’s not done in a completely safe and private space). But i haven’t had the chance to talk to many psych-heads about it yet, unfortunately. You should interview a narrative therapist for your project (and then tell me _everything_ s/he says).
October 15th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
You’ll have to say this on cam for me. :-)
I wanted to interview a psychologist but a narrative therapist would be great. It’s a good idea. Merci!
October 21st, 2007 at 2:03 am
[…] de la thérapie par l’écriture (tel que décritpar Michael Lenzner ici), ce n’est pas du […]
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:15 am
Have been blogging for about ayear from my home in Westmount. Would love to meet some other Montreal bloggers. Among other things, I would like to get some help on technical stuff to make my blog more visible. I figure I am in the right church here. And I hope I am in the right pew.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Hey Neil,
You should come down to the Yulblog meetups. http://www.yulblog.org . First wed each month. It’s not a place necessarily to ask for SEO advice, but you will meet a lot of people who have experience with that and you can probably pick up some tricks.
I’m not sure I understand the motivation to have more people read your blog. If I understand you properly, I don’t really think that’s how it works. Being online is a conversation. If you want to participate more in that conversation there are things you can do. But having the blog be more visible is more of an effect of your participation, than something you can control by yourself.
Let me know if you are heading down to the next yulblog. I will make sure that I attend.