Lakeland university course COM 325

1. Week 3 Lecture Notes Com325
Blogging: chap 5 (pages 115- 129)
Personal Connections: part of chap 5, pages 118 – 124
Everybody Writes: Section 60 (pages 181-183)

2. Episodic
narrative
 Blogs tell stories in episodic form, People read because
they desire the end of the story.
 Episodic narrative is well suited for blog because
people skim read on the Internet.
 Most blogs are short enough to be read in minutes
 Blogs use images in addition to text
 Blogs are updated frequently
 Blogs end when the goal is achieved or the writer stops
writing
 Blogs can be anonymous or personal
 Regular readers come to know the characters and
places of the blogger

3. Howlong
shoulda blog
be?
 The length of other digital writing, from Everybody Writes
 blog post: ideal length is 1,500 words
 email subject line: 50 or fewer characters
 Website text line: 12 words.
 paragraph: 3 to 4 lines.
 YouTube video: between 3 and 3-and-1/2 minutes
 Podcast: 22 minutes
 Title tag: 55 characters
 Meta description: 155 characters
 Facebook post: 100 to 140 characters
 Tweet: between 120 and 130 characters (determined
prior to the lengthened tweet of 280 characters)
 Domain name: 8 characters

4. identity
 Issues that shake people in online environments center
on identity.
 Identities are social; Identities are personal
 Personal identity refers to the aspects of ourselves that
distinguish us from others, including values, traits,
tastes, and biographies.
 Social identity: aspects of ourselves that define us as a
group member

5. Embodiedor
mediated
communication
 Top types of communication:
 Embodied communication (face-to-face where
communicants are in the presence of one another
 Mediated communication: communicants are not in the
physical presences of one another
 Examples of mediated communication include social
network postings, Skype, telephone conversations,
audio meetings, web-conferencing, and so on
 In digital media, we are said to be disembodied
identities
 Most people, most of the time use new media to act in
ways consistent with their embodied selves.
 Early research on identity focused on identity
flexibility used in multiplayer games and MUDs.

6. Thereisno
“OneTrueSelf”
 People expect others to be deceptive online.
 Self-representation is only one source of info about a
person in an online environment. Assuming different
identities is similar to playing a variety of roles in life.
 Identity scholars such as Gorrman (1959) say the self
is not a single, unified entity, meaning there is no “one
True Self.”
 Self is flexible and multiple, shaped by context and
environment.

7. Inauthentic self
 Inauthentic: representing one’s self too differently
across contexts.
 A person’s body provides a context for the self.
 When there is no body attached to the behavior, the
authenticity of behavior becomes less clear.
 For example, do cyberaffairs constitute adultery?
 A 19th century court declared a marriage that took
place by telegraph to be real despite the lack of co-
presence.

8. Disembodied
audiences
 People get less information about their audiences
through mediated communication than in person.
 When people construct online messages, they rely on
an imagined audience.
 Online audiences cannot be fully known, leading to
concerns about privacy.
 Privacy: controlling access to and use of information,
and the integrity of the context in which the
information was shared.
 Privacy is not secrecy.

9. Whytheaudience
cannot beknown
 Digital information is stored and replicated
 Digital information can travel to an audience for whom
it was never intended.
 There are silent listeners: owners of Internet
platforms, companies, and advertisers who buy and sell
information about consumers

10. Publicness
 On the other side of secrecy is the use of digital
communication for publicness
 Communicating to unknown audiences is a way to
build a public identity or “brand.”
 Self-branding is seen by some as less authentic, but it
can also be an asset when a professional online
reputation is established and nurtured using multiple
communication points such as social networks such as
LinkedIn and blog networks.

11. IdentityCues
 The most important identity cue is one’s name. Others are
race, nationality and gender
 Language is the primary tool for revealing our self to
others.
 Images we associate with ourselves, including avatars
 People’s technological ability in cue manipulation is
important.
 Behavior online
 Linking to others A person’s taste selections are an
identify cue
 The information posted by other people (tag us, link to us)
 Our SNS friends affect our identity. The ability of
observers to interpret cues affects our identity. Deception
can center on presenting one’s ideal self rather than
creating a false self

12. References
 Baym, N. (2015). Personal connections in the digital
age (2nd ed). Malden, MA: Polity Press.
 Handley, A. (2014). Everybody writes: Your go-to guide
to creating ridiculously good content (2nd ed.). Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley.
 Rettberg. J.W., (2013). Blogging (2nd ed). Malden,
MA: Polity Press.