The main place to look these days for my unpublished academic thoughts is the (unofficial) Media@LSE Group Weblog which I set up for myself and my fellow PhD students. For more personal links and commentary, see my personal weblog, started in 2001 - blog.org, and you can consult my journalistic writing for a less-academically-rigorous look at my interest in the social impact of the Internet over the years.
Thesis abstract
‘As if nobody’s reading’: The imagined audience and socio-technical biases in personal blogging practice in the UK
This thesis examines the understandings and meanings of personal blogging from the perspective of blog authors. The theoretical framework draws on a symbolic interactionist perspective, focusing on how meaning is constructed through blogging practices, supplemented by theories of mediation and critical technology studies. The principal evidence in this study is derived from an analysis of in-depth interviews with bloggers selected to maximise their diversity based on the results of an initial survey. This is supplemented by an analysis of personal blogging’s technical contexts and of various societal influences that appear to influence blogging practices.
Bloggers were found to have limited interest in gathering information about their readers, appearing to rely instead on an assumption that readers are sympathetic. Although personal blogging practices have been framed as being a form of radically free expression, they were also shown to be subject to potential biases including social norms and the technical characteristics of blogging services. Blogs provide a persistent record of a blogger’s practice, but the bloggers in this study did not generally read their archives or expect others to do so, nor did they retrospectively edit their archives to maintain a consistent self-presentation.
The empirical results provide a basis for developing a theoretical perspective to account for blogging practices. This emphasises firstly that a blogger’s construction of the meaning of their practice can be based as much on an imagined and desired social context as it is on an informed and reflexive understanding of the communicative situation. Secondly, blogging practices include a variety of envisaged audience relationships, and some blogging practices are essentially self-directed with potential audiences playing a marginal role. Blogging’s technical characteristics and the social norms surrounding blogging practices appear to enable and reinforce this unanticipated lack of engagement with audiences. This perspective contrasts with studies of computer mediated communication that suggest bloggers would monitor their audiences and present themselves strategically to ensure interactions are successful in their terms. The study also points the way towards several avenues for further research including a more in-depth consideration of the neglected structural factors (both social and technical) which potentially influence blogging practices, and an examination of social network site use practices using a similar analytical approach.
Publications
Livingstone, S. and D. Brake (in prep) "On the Rapid Rise of Social Networking Sites: New Findings and Policy Implications", Children and Society.
Brake, D. (2008) "Shaping the ‘Me’ in Myspace: The Framing of Profiles on a Social Network Site" in Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories: Self-Representations in New Media, (Lundby, K. ed.) Peter Lang, New York, pp. 285-300.
Brake, D. (2008) "Personal Publishing" in The International Encyclopedia of Communication, (Donsbach, W. ed.) Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK and Malden, MA, pp. 3571-3572. http://www.communicationencyclopedia.com/subscriber/tocnode?id=g9781405131995_chunk_g978140513199521_ss26-1
Brake, D. (2007) "Personal Webloggers and Their Audiences: Who Do They Think They Are Talking To?" in Personal Media: Life between Screens [in Norwegian], (Luders, M., L. Proitz and T. Rasmussen eds) Gyldendal, Oslo, pp. 141-163.
Alvi, I., et al. (2007) "Meeting Their Potential: The Role of Education and Technology in Overcoming Disadvantage and Disaffection in Young People" BECTA Coventry, UK. http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh&catcode=_re_rp_02&rid=14771
Hargrave, A. M. and S. Livingstone (2007) "Harm and Offence in Media Content: Updating the 2005 Review" Ofcom http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/telecoms/reports/byron/annex6.pdf
Livingstone, S. and A. M. Hargrave (2006) Harm and Offence in Media Content: A Review of the Evidence, Intellect, Bristol. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/5225/
Brake, D. (2006) "Chat Rooms, Bulletin Boards, Electronic Games Effects" in Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media, (Arnett, J. J. ed.) Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. http://www.sagepub.com/refbooksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book226757
Brake, D. (2005) "Book Review: Cyberprotest: New Media, Citizens and Social Movements", New Media & Society, 7 (3), p. 425. http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/7/3/423
MSc Coursework
Date Publication Description Aug 2003 MSc Dissertation Missing the grassroots?
Factors shaping the political use of the Internet among UK activistsApril 2003 LSE coursework for
Citizenship and the Media (Professor Stephen Coleman)E-Democracy and Deliberative Democracy:
How do technology and democracy interact?Feb 2003 LSE coursework for
New Media, Information and Knowledge Systems (Professor Robin Mansell )Do the new digital media enable wider participation in the public sphere? December 2002 LSE coursework for
Theories and Concepts in Media and CommunicationsDo the newer media require a different analysis
of power relations as compared to older media?December 2002 LSE coursework for
Information SystemsConference and workshop presentations and attendance
Date Conference Presentation title 21-24 Jul 2009 IAMCR Web 2.0 and the move from digital consumption to production and interaction: A new agenda for digital divide research 4-5 Jun 2009 Digital Cultures Workshop: Social Media Publics 26-28 May 2009 The Work of Life Writing ‘As if nobody’s reading’: personal bloggers' imagined audiences 2007 Transforming Audiences, London, UK Personal webloggers and their audiences - one medium, many communicative contexts 2007 Constructing a purposive interview sample of bloggers
2007 International Communications Association, San Francisco Filling the 'About Me' Box: Questioning the centrality of self reflection in online identity-related spaces 2007 Inter-University Graduate Conference, London UK The evolution of identity and its expression: From ascribed to freely created and back again? 2007 Poke 1.0 - A Facebook research symposium, London, UK 2005 MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference 2005 Private lives lived in public: weblogs and the performance of self 2005 Association of Internet Researchers 6 (Chicago) 2004 Joint Westminster, Goldsmith, LSE, City Doctoral Symposium Whos Reading My Home Page? Approaches to the Micro-Audience 2004 Association of Internet Researchers 5 (Sussex) My work at New Scientist has been cited in papers including:
Introna, L. D. and H. Nissenbaum (2000) "Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters", The Information Society, 16 (3), pp. 169-185(17).
and Lawrence, S. and C. L. Giles (1998) "Searching the World Wide Web ", Science, 280 (5360), pp. 98-100.
The article most cited is Lost in Cyberspace which is gone from New Scientist's public pages but is still available via the Internet Archive.