Thanks, Liz, for setting this up (what a good idea) and hi Alex and Joi! I'm a bit short for time, but I'll just briefly introduce my interest in this: I'm in Bergen, Norway, and I've been doing some research on blogging, in parallel with a phd on digital narrative (due to be finished in a month). I'm interested in blogging as a tool in academic research (and I co-authored a paper on that with Torill Mortensen: Blogging Thoughts (pdf)). I'm also really interested in the ways in which blogs connect, and the networks that appear. I'm fascinated by what the ways in which we use links to connect affects power (I wrote a short paper about that, actually) and I'd like to continue researching these connections - the way the blogosphere works or could work, and how connections are made, and how collaborative thinking happens, and so on.
There's a funding program (KIM: Kommunikasjon, IKT og Medier - sorry, no English description here) from the Norwegian Research Council coming up (applications due January 31) which would suit a project about this kind of stuff, and I'm interested in being part of a larger Norwegian project which would relate to this, and I'm interested in that project collaborating with other, international projects. I need to talk with the people who'll actually be leading the Norwegian project about this, so perhaps I should invite them here.
Hi, all. I'll forego the self-intro (I am my blog), and instead suggest some things I'm interested in lately that might have brought me here.
1. The most bloggy thing I'm working on now is a project to, in basic terms, replicate Google's Zeitgeist for the blog world, looking at what topics seem to be the fastest gainers and what is being said about them. A realistic goal for a prototype, given other active projects right now, is January. I presented something of a proof-of-concept for this at the Association for Internet Researchers conference in October.
2. I've just initiated some work with a student named Taso Lagos on exchanges between Greek and US bloggers via their blogs. This is proposed as part of a panel on blogging at International Communication Association meeting in San Diego in May.
I'm doing some other stuff on Slashdot and the Zapatistas, but neither are directly related to personal blogs. I've given this address over to some colleagues who may be interested in joining up, either from the US side or elsewhere. If they have some interest, I'll sign them onto the board.
I think a number of possibilities have been brought together. Assuming a large (I know, "medium"; but over $1 mill seems large to me), multiyear program, we should probably brainstorm about (a) the ultimate hoped-for product, and (b) what milestone(s) we would expect to reach within the first 9 months or so.
I've just posted an entry to mamamusings about pattern languages for communication technologies, especially academic communication. Seems relevant to the research ideas being tossed around.
Welcome to the new "blogresearch" blog, which I've set up to allow ongoing discussion on the topic of collaborative, funded, blog-related research.
To start with, the participants/authors in this shared space are myself, Jill Walker, Joi Ito, and Alex Halavais. Each of us also have the ability to add additional authors if we so desire.
I'll start by putting in some of my posts from mamamusings, and will leave it up to those who've exchanged e-mail with me the extent to which they want to add that material up here in the public eye.