Unit 1: Popular Culture
Student Blogs
The past few years have seen an explosion of blogging, and in this unit you'll explore this unique aspect of online culture. The weblog, otherwise known as blog, combines the diary, news article, and research tool into a form that straddles the line between public and private texts. People write blogs for many purposes: teenagers chronicle their social woes in online journals, scholars document their research, web-savvy commentators point surfers toward the latest and hottest web pages. The purposes and content of blogs are as diverse as the people who write them.
You will enter into this online community by creating your own blog, and then you will analyze this phenomenon from a meta-level by writing a research paper. Here are some sources to give you some background on the blogosphere:
- What is a Weblog? from Blogging Across the Curriculum at Quinnipiac University, a useful introduction to blogs
- Blogging Bibliography
- BlogBib CARL 2002: from a conference of librarians, this is a useful list of online resources about blogging
- Wired News: Warning: Blogs Can Be Infectious: What makes a blog popular?
- BlogPulse: A company that monitors blog topics and common links