A long time between drinks…

… but I have been busy busy busy.

Objectives:

This research is interested in the role of online writing for the construction of self and exploration of place-identity. The central research question asks, “How do we construct a sense of self and negotiate our understanding of place in the traditionally non-spatial, mediated online world?”. I will address this question through an examination of the genre of personal blogging, by addressing the following objectives:

1. Explore the construction of self on the Internet through an interrogation of the influence of blogging and community (i.e. the awareness of audience) upon the performative subject.
2. Investigate the influence of place upon the awareness of self and subjectivity in relation to blogging and other online experience.
3. Analyse the narratives constructed through online writing, particularly blogging, and the subsequent awareness of self as gained by writer and audience.
4. Investigate the role of ‘place’ in blogging and how it is conceptualised in relation to the narration of both offline embodied and virtual experiences.

Wanted to purchase: 1x writing mojo

The best thing I’ve written so far:

Surely ‘place’ is a challenging, if not unusual, concept to investigate in relation to the Internet. The context is non-physical by design, and this is seen as one of its many benefits: boundaries are broken down and space rendered meaningless. But then again, we are also regarded as existing beyond corporeality, online – to an extent, at least. In fact, thinking about what it means to be online has changed significantly in recent years, to the point where it might not even be fair to consider the Internet a non-physical space. The cyberpunks tried, but it seems that we’re indelibly tied to our bodies, and therefore to our (offline) physical surroundings.

Bloggers are an interesting group to consider. For the most part, the subject matter of the blogs I will study deal not with the documentation of online findings (although they do to some degree, for sure) but rather with offline, embodied experiences. This project will question our reification in the online context, not as individuals roaming the Internet free of our fleshy encumbrance, but rather as existing simultaneously in (at least) three different places: as actors behind the computer screen, blogging everyday occurrences both for oneself and for others; as a part of the ongoing, continually written history preserved between interfaces, perpetuating online forever as a memory; and as a character in the story of one’s own life, consumed by a somewhat imaginary audience on the other side of the screen.

And is that a concern, or what? But this is the tone I like to write with… so why am I struggling so much?

90% doubt, 10% lack of preparation. This sucks.

A title, for now.

Current working title of my thesis, as of about ten minutes ago:

In words and pictures: Narrating self through blogging, and other online discourses of being.

I like it. But I’m sure that will change…