Don’t even try me. I’m a DHer.
Here is a photo of 3 pages in my portfolio that are part of the planning stage.
The first is my “initial reaction” to the subject matter in the form of a letter, the second is a mind map of all the words that come to mind when I think “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and the third is working with composition and mapping out what I want to actually do.
BLOGGING PERSONA
After talking to Jen R, the digital initiatives intern at Bryn Mawr College (and friend too!), I thought about forming a blogging persona which I intend to “become” on Tumblr and other blogging platforms. (Such as my HASTAC blog). So, here are my dos and don’ts:
DO:
- give credit where it is due (use handles, usernames, anything that can link your material back)
- try to write accessibly - recognize that the Tumblr audience isn’t quite accustomed to seeing posts about the digital humanities among the sea of memes and gifs.
- include other types of media from time to time to break up the lengthy (in Tumblr terms) text posts.
- think of ways to make your posts stand out and be interesting
- get reblogged - sustained silent reading (more on this later) isn’t as “silent” as it is on other blogging platforms.
DON’T:
- mention my friends or family by name unless they have said or done something that is relevant to what you are posting about. Writing “My friend Nicole said that she didn’t like Tumblr made me think about how it” is «INTERDIT.»
- mention your personal relationships.
- mention mundane things like what you ate for breakfast or how few hours of sleep you got last night.
- be afraid to post because you think people won’t like what you’re saying and make fun of you because you’re young.
- blow up other people’s dashboard with too many posts. Use the queue.
- be mean. If you don’t agree with them, say it nicely.
“As the popular technology blogger Robert Scoble explained in a recent post defending frictionless sharing, “The new world is you just open up Facebook and everything you care about will be streaming down the screen.”
This is the very stance that is killing cyberflânerie: the whole point of the…
(Source: The New York Times)
“Until scholars really believe that publishing on the web is as valuable as publishing in print — and more importantly, until they believe that their institutions believe it, too — few will be willing to risk their careers on a new way of working, with the result that that new way of working will remain marginal and undervalued.”
Truth.
(From Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Planned Obsolescence).
(via internettie)
An Extension Of Yourself?
I’m really interested in thinking about the line between the virtual and physical worlds. I believe that social networking sites blur this seemingly simple line and Tumblr is a fine example of that.
I’m thinking of this Queer Culture and Social Media Study where participants are given a space that allows them to speak about their own “lived experiences”. I really like the quote from Andrew (andrewwoj.tumblr.com) in which he speaks about his experience with Tumblr: “…you know, come out of your shell a little bit, you know, if you can’t do it in real life who knows, maybe you can do it on the internet.”
I’m interested in the notion of being free to express yourself in a way that you can’t in the real world. Additionally, the idea of kinship within the LGBTQ community is fascinating in the sense that communities have extended beyond the parameters of meatspace and into the digital world. The idea that there must be some grounding in a physical space for a relationship system to occur is slowly dissipating.
I’m curious about the issues with privacy though. Though participants in this study are given this “safe space”, their faces are still included on the website, thus running the risk of identification. However, I am reminded of a conversation that I had with a person in the tech department at my old high school. He told me think of the relationships between people you meet online as a series of concentric circles. The ones closer to the middle (so those who are closer than you in the real world), actually pose greater risks to your security than those who are further away. So, instead of stranger danger, I believe that we should change the ways in which we view the situation.
But how does this link into academic study? I love the idea of using social networking to create a safe space for participants to express themselves. It becomes an interesting method of archiving things that could never have been archived before.
