Reflecting on Blogging

The world of blogging - the online community where anyone can sign up and share their story. I discovered this world in high school, through some friends who had opened their own sites on Xanga.com and Myspace.com. And I guess with high school being that place where finding yourself is a constant challenge, I envisioned a public sphere to speak my mind as a way to truly express what it was that I was feeling. So I entered the world of personal websites and blogs, through a Xanga and Myspace page.
And now so many years later this small branch of technology has grown into a monumental craze that almost everyone either engages in, or at least knows about. As an avid Journ1 student, I have heard a lot about the various parts of Journalism at Rhodes – television, radio, design, photojournalism and lastly new media.

The latter has been the focus of this term’s course in JMS1 and for the most part, it has been intriguing. It must be noted though, that a vast majority of students were completely thrown in the deep end and left to fight through technological intricacies on their own. However, I appreciate and applaud the enthusiasm with which our lecturers promoted their course, and do not deny that there is good potential in future Blogging courses.

The fact that a blog is a genre of media on its own, may imply that there will be ideological constraints and generic expectations; but having worked within this genre on an academic level I have become aware of the freedom that is allowed within this blog genre. Blogs are integrated into the public sphere, often on an international level, and the only boundaries that were implied were of an academic nature, demanding a standard of respect, intelligence and creative thought. However, although there is a lot of freedom in the blog genre, I think that knowing our tutors and lecturers would constantly be checking over us, inhibited a lot of truly personal thoughts.

However, there was still so much space for growth within our performances as a group and as an individual. I found it easy and fun to work within my group. Each member was always more than willing to adjust schedules and plans in order to sit and work together, but we were all equally considerate of other personal commitments too. In each tutorial we were given ample opportunity to share our thoughts on the course, discuss any technical difficulties and offer help to each other. Through these discussions we became aware of fellow students’ blogs and how they were approaching them, which allowed for each of us to learn and adapt our blog accordingly.

The theme of ‘surviving first year’ is not something that can be easily researched, which made it difficult to compile solid research if it was required in a task. But, because it is a theme that depends on personal experience it was easy to write substantial work based on what you as an individual had gone through, and what you had witnessed in other people’s lives. Though the research was limited, we were never short of sources like other first year blogs, friends’ perspectives and students from different faculties. The personal aspect of a blog meant that they could share their stories with the safety of knowing that they were not the only ones trying to survive first year.

I think in writing a blog, ethics can easily be lost to individual opinions because when you begin to share personal thoughts, one can easily lose the boundaries of ethics when the focus shifts from right and wrong to the liberation of saying what’s on your mind. Being encouraged to reflect upon personal experiences allows people to express themselves freely; the limitations of ethics curbs this freedom because each piece can not offend anyone or overstep any ethical boundaries. While this is not necessarily a negative thing, because ethical boundaries will ensure respect for human rights, it is also rather restrictive in terms of the international scale of blogging and how your posts can reach anyone in the world. If you are only writing in terms of ethics, you may not be writing honestly. However, I noticed that a lot of our blogs were able to find a balance. A lot of opinions were controversial and risky but never crossed the line to become unethical. Being aware of the diversity amongst our first years, I felt that we were able to respect everyone but still be able to write honestly.

I do not, personally, consider blogging to be journalism, but rather new media. And while I am very interested and involved in many branches of new media, I do not think that this work fully achieved its academic purpose. It was a creative way to put the theories we’ve worked with into practise but it was still a lot to take in and have to pay attention to. At times the detail and attention required to perfect the art that is blogging, was overwhelmed by other academic commitments and their demands. However, I think a lot of good times with group members were shared, and I truly believe that through the exposure to other first year experiences we were rewarded greatly with a more grounded and unprejudiced view of what we all have to tackle in a first year at university.