Haiti Crisis and Blogs.

In Jill Rettberg's Blogging, she talks about three different types of blogs. Last week our class split into groups to explore what ways these blogs were addressing the incident in Haiti.
At first we weren't quite sure how we felt about using this crisis for our class. In the end, we are still studying how blogs function in society. I think this really showed us that blogs are important. More than other forms of mass media, connecting through the internet provides a plethora of information. You can make a reference to something on TV and expect your readers to get it, or you can make a reference in your blog and have a link that explains it. In this way blogs make connecting pieces of information and gathering knowledge much easier. Your news anchor can tell you the Red Cross is taking donations, or a blog can say the same thing and link you, in less than a second to a page that lets you offer your services. And our exploring of these blogs, led us to more information on relief work and how we, personally, could get involved.
Our group had filter blogs. We came up with tons of links in our wave, and narrowed it down to a few to present in class.



The first are the blogs at Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is actually a news and information website but they have a page dedicated to blogs. This one was unique in that it had many different bloggers posting. The topics varied from the controversial Pat Robertson's comments on Haiti (watch him explain how revolting against slavery and oppression is the same as making a pact with the devil) to simple reports of how relief work is trickling down.



One common filter post we found (on almost every site; even bloggers who have no connection to Haiti or the earthquake, and blogs who's topics are hardly related, most universally stopped to make this post) was what we will call the "how you can help" post. These are the blog posts that are a list of organizations that are sending aid. We found one that stood out because instead of being a laundry list of organisations and donation options, this one talked about what we are specifically learning in class, technology. Computer World's blog comes from many different posters and explains how Twitter, Facebook, and Google are involved (check out how Google updated their images, post-quake).



This blog was definitely my favorite. It is from Wyclef Jean who is Haitan born himself. What really illustrated to us the power of the internet to move people was the fact that while we were on wave, preparing our presentation, within the hour a new post arrived on the blog. This blog explores more than just relief efforts, and updates on the people of Haiti, it also explores how the international community is reacting. Both of these blog's efforts show, just like his twitter feed, a unique personal situation within this crisis. Someone with the power to move people using what he can to promote efforts to help the Haitian peoples.

Fake Twitter Profiles

One of the other groups today got up and in their presentation included a fake William Chaucer blog. One thing we don't explore a lot in class is twitter (probably because people's feeds change SO much). So I wanted to share with you some of my favorite fake twitter profiles.

1. Almighty God will probably be offensive and blasphemous to some people, but I quite enjoy the majority of his tweets. In the beginning they were tweets like "thinking of making it rain," and there are plenty of jokes or cartoons people send him involving Gods. But now he gets involved in political/religious debates, which are pretty interesting to watch.

2. Drunk Hulk is based off a comic image of The Hulk, wasted. He is angry, so his tweets are in all caps. Also, his syntax is usually off. But his tweets are hilarious, and sometimes long form, and sometimes have to do with something that just happened like "POOR HAITI! CHANGE TO iHAITI AND PEOPLES CARE AGAIN!"

3. Darth Vader tweets some funny sith jokes, and R2-D2 does what he does best.

4. Lucifer is basically the opposite of Almighty God.

WHAT AINT NO COUNTRY I EVA HEARD OF

You know one of the best movies in the world is Pulp Fiction, right?



Here's what happens when PF meets Google Wave:
EMBEDDING FAIL, so link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcxF9oz9Cu0
warning NSFW


PS if you're lost watch this, then go rent PULP FICTION or pick it up at the library

Narrative Blogs

The blogs our group decided to focus on were narrative blogs. Narrative blogs come in many different forms but we found interest in the ones who's bloggers had specific goals in mind. One common goal-oriented blog is a relationship blog. One example of that is Single Mom Seeking where Rachel Sarah chronicles her experiences in the dating world as a single mother. Another relationship blog is Sex, Lies, & Dating in the City which is an outlet for an anonymous social media consultant to share her experience in the dating world.



A different kind of blog, similar to the dating blogs, is a weight loss blog. We found one by a self-proclaimed "token fat girl" called All My Natural Weight Loss where Lorrie not only talks about her struggle with her self image, and her quest to lose weight, she also sells her artistic creations, judges products, and provides recipes for people who are in the same boat as her. Another weight loss blog, Less Jess, let's Jessica Scott share her tips for weight loss and battling food cravings.



The last blog we'd like to touch on is the Julie/Julia blog. This is one of the most famous forms of a narrative blog, brought to public light by the recent Julie & Julia film starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. The movie shows the journey, through a blog, one girl, Julie, takes, by going through every one of Julia Child's recipes. We see her progress through these, and her struggles cooking, and her relation to Julia Child. The blog became so large that it became a book, and the book then became a movie.

Group post?

Oh the effort.
Once again we've been assigned a blog post to be created via wave as a group.

Here's what we managed:

Blogs are a form of communication, but are they part of literature? They certainly have qualities we associate with literature such as well, obviously, writing, and of course story lines. They have a specific narrative, although it is not neccesairly conventional until you look at how things like TV shows are set up. Rettberg notes that blogs, like TV shows can exist on their own (you can watch one episode of a show, or read one post of a blog and enjoy it, perhaps not as much as watching an entire series or following a blog or reading it's archives, but you can either way). She also notes that people seem to tend to write with an end goal in mind, hoping to look back on all that they have done or written about. Because blogs are oftentimes meant to be representative of a certain person, whether or not they are themselves explicitly personal, it can be very distressing for readers to discover their author they've been devotedly following is fictional.

TOKI WARTOOTH

Prof said we could post about whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, so if anyone can figure this one out, I'm smiles!


"What is acoustic? Oh, you mean a grandpa's guitars?"

One of my favorite shows (I say this like I watch TV) is Metalocalypse. If you don't know what it is, I feel sorry for you. The basic premise is a cartoon about a metal band called Dethklok. (If you didn't know, I'm WAY into metal. I even have a radio show all about metal & hardcore, The Wednesday Night Knife Fight, you can find us on Facebook or Twitter [be wary of cursing]). It recalls This is Spinal Tap! But it's totally different. It's for fans of metal, making fun of bands and fans of metal, but also in appreciation and reverence. It's funny with or without slight references.

Anyway, the fake band (that is now, really a real band [meta madness!] that tours) is composed of five members Nathan Explosion, Skwisgaar Skwigelf, Toki Wartooth, Pickles, and William Murderface Murderface Murderface Murderface. My favorite character though is Toki! Voiced by Tommy Blacha and with a cool stache (Fu Manchu, to be specific). He's "the sweet one" people say.

"Naked ladies! Oh, wowee!"

Week one: The Blog! !#^)(@ What is this crap!?

During our first week of class, we were asked by our professor to get into groups, work in Google Wave, and come up with one blog post.

Let's just say we learned that even with the help of the magical Google Wave, collaborating is a hard business.

Our wave was absolutely FILLED with quote after quote. We managed to have it so that after a lot of our quotes were smaller wavelets with our thoughts and interpretations.

I'd say the wave process helped us to understand a lof of Jill Walker Rettberg's text, but we weren't so great at coming up with one cumulative blog post. We managed to crank out 2 (two!) paragraphs (they pale in comparison to the epic essays another group wrote):

Although at first it may sound contradictory,

the idea that we gain more from weak ties than strong ones is an important one. Over

the internet we can have tens to hundreds of weak ties. These are totally

different from our offline connections. In the “real world” we usually connect

to people in our family or “shared space” (61). Online we may have strong ties

via our interests, but we are much more likely to make several weak

connections. Particularly, the way blogging is set up aids this process. Our

blogs are commented on or linked to by strangers, all of which we have access

to. If we were looking for information on a subject, such as where’s the best

place to get coffee, our “real world” friend might already know, and if they

had a good idea, they would have already told us. But if we mention it on our

blog, that one stranger who reads it who just happens to be a coffee bean connoisseur

could tell us (ignoring the fact that google maps is amazing, as is urban

spoon).

and!

Blogs can serve as part of a social networking arena, but

really, communities like Facebook and Myspace are more conducive to making

personal connections like that. As we read in earlier chapters, blogs can be

professional and about fields of study, or personal, but they usually aren’t

out-reaches to friends (the one exception would be Twitter, a micro-blogging

service wherein the majority of people tweet both for personal connections and to use as a filter). One of the many good things about blogs is that they can cover any

subject at all, and therefore inform readers of information they may have never

learned otherwise. We learn in our reading that blogs often cover topics that

are too specific, or aren’t usually deemed “newsworthy.” Even though most

bloggers don’t view themselves as journalists, there are some that do consider themselves to be acting as journalists.. Some bloggers report on

subjects more in depth than the news does. This has led to protections for

journalist-bloggers such as not having to release sources, much like the protection real

journalists have.

So you see, we weren't so successful. And looking at this week's wave, coupled with the fact that I currently don't have a laptop, makes me feel pretty sad about the outcome that will appear tomorrow in class.

On a side note, we learned that right clicking isn't so useful in wave.