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.

Objectives, again…

I started typing out a rather emo and frustrated post about my research objectives earlier today, and then abandoned it as I decided it would probably be a more fruitful use of my time to do some reading about research methods, rather than bitch about my inability as a researcher. Anyway, out of the blue, I seem to have come up with four objectives that I actually quite like, and which actually sound somewhat-sortof-pseudo intelligent. Sort of. Number three is probably superfluous but I’m waiting to discuss it w/ supervisor before I give it the boot. So:

1.    Explore the usefulness of blogging – specifically, the narration of one’s everyday life and the construction of the self as a character or personality – in the adoption of a sense of self, and assess the significance of this narrative being available for public consumption.
2.    Promote the idea that identity is inherently tied to place, and that narrative is an essential way of negotiating the self in a virtual setting as it enables the “mapping” of one’s individuality and experience.
3.    Consider the role that the relationship between geographical space and cyberspace  (and the manner in which they intersect on the Internet to contribute to “place”) plays in the construction of self.
4.    Illustrate the negotiation of place as the intersection of space and ideology in a non-physical manner (i.e., how we as human beings are coming to understand ourselves and our place in the world given that we cannot rely upon our corporeal navigation of landscapes or the physical opposition of self to other objects and people).

How does that look? Maybe with those things in mind I can take the whip and crack it over the widely-spreading behind of my Background section (which, in all honesty, is a pile of loosely related information trying its hardest to come across as a coherent piece of academic writing, but failing dismally).