Hi everyone,
I'm developing exercises for my students involving the production, legitimation and dissemination of news/information/knowledge/entertainment/culture. One of the sections of this unit will involve explorations of independent publishing and I would like to give them a handy list of representative blogs to start them off when they investigate the blogosphere.
Could you please send me or post in the comments a short list of your favorite blogs and if its not too much a description of their perspective? I am very interested in getting a wide range of political, social, global and genre perspectives--I appreciate your contributions and will compile a comprehensive list and post it on Dialogic (and send it to those who supply me with an email address).
Thanks!
6 comments:
Hello. Two blogs I can't live without are:
www.mightygirl.com and www.defectiveyeti.com .
They both feature keen observations and linguistic mastery. They're not really topical, though.
Thanks Lisa!
I'll check them out--you didn't leave an email, if you would like a copy of the blogs that everyone suggests, leave (or send me) an email or website address.
The best blog is totally Net Politik. The fact that it happens to be my blog has nothing to my opinion... seriously... I am unbiased in this sense. BTW, Thanks for the link, my friend.
Out of curiosity, you say that you are interested in alternative and independent publications/viewpoints... However, I couldn't help but notice you that you also happen to be interested in rhetorical studies (I suspected that you were some sort of rhetorician when I counted three ";" in one sentence). Are you more interested in the actual writing and ideas of alternative and independent journals, or are you interested in how certain viewpoints and mediums affect the rhetoric and message? I'm not trying to test you; I'm actually quite curious. I myself am interested in both -- but perhaps a tad bit more interested in the latter.
Nick,
I am interested in both--let me explain one at a time:
1) I am interested in alternative/independent forums because I rarely see my worldview reproduced in the mainstream news media and hollywood entertainments (I do in some films and novels). Its not that I am very
radical or transgressive... I'm just your typical working-class background, ex-fundamentalist, ex-gang, ex-criminal, ex-addict (well few of them pop up from time-to-time), high school dropout, construction worker for a decade who decided to go to college because he liked to read, now finishing up a PhD, and teaching writing classes in a big-state university... varied
perspectives develop out of those backgrounds and I fear (yes fear!) dogmatic, with us or against us, perspectives (probably because my early years of religious indocrination, experiences with tribal extremism of gangs, and coming to maturity during the Reagan years).
2) The rhetoric emphasis comes from my experiences with various groups that moved me away from my own dogmatic/fundamentalist positions. Studying world
religions after my disillusionment with fundamentalist Christianity, studying propaganda techniques and histories of social movements as a person-outside-the-law and coming to the conclusion that what I was doing was wrong in the sense that I was not helping anyone but myself (not romantic resistance as my immature self wanted to idealize my activities), reading while locked-up and realizing certain truths about power (especially in watching the interactions of prisoners, judges, lawyers and officers--society reproduced in an intensely, small scale), and observing the operations of knowledge-production in academia (which I idealistically thought would be different) and beginning to glimpse how knowledge is produced,
legitimated and disseminated.
Thus, I believe that the more voices the better. For me, the best route is to learn how knowledge is produced and how it plays a role in the reproduction of social relations. I'm still learning and seeking--at
the same time I teach these introductory courses designed to familiarize students with the discourses of academia and to teach them how to "write" (ha!)or better yet multiple modes of reading/thinking/writing/communicating ... I ask them to join with me as we try to make sense of what is
going in the world and to, as a collective, try to gather pieces-of-the-puzzle so that we might produce a more comprehensive, collective understanding (I often feel as if I am cheating b/c my students teach me).
So, yes, rhetoric (or discourse) is my main emphasis... the quote marks are from our classroom practice of bracketing words we are working with or that we want to signify as being disputed or problematic.
Nick--last night was the first time I came across Net-Politik, but I will definitely be back (and I had already put your site on the list I am building for the students) as I was very impressed.
(note to anyone that reads this--this was originally an email, but since I am from time-to-time asked this question I have put it here as a comment)
Thivai (never to be confused with that bourgeois academic Michael--especially in official circumstances!)
Thanks for the links Harry, I'll check them out...
Best blogs? That's a toughie, 'cause I think everyone has something to add to the conversation. But you ask for hierarachy, so I'll try. :)
First off, it depends on what type of blogs you're looking for. There are a wide diversity of blog types, as you know, and I tend to traffic in those that are preoccupied with politics and current events. So I'm missing out on a whole part of the blogosphere, unfortunately.
To make things more difficult, I don't know what constitutes a blog anymore. A lot of websites have adopted blog formats, so does this mean we should include them? For example, two excellent sources of news with blog-like formats are Cursor and FAIR's Media Views, but I don't know if you'd characterize them as blogs. Moreover, does it matter if the blog in question is run by an individual or institution?
I also tend to privilege sites that are link-heavy more than comment-heavy, or, in other words, those that tend to be driven by an 'encyclopedic ethic' more than an 'opining as you will' ethic. Does that make sense? Probably not, but try these, which, again, some might question whether they are blogs: War in Context, Information Clearing House, Independent Media.TV.
Of those blogs that are unquestionably blogs, I give props to Juan Cole (for a close reading of Iraq and political events in the Mid East that adds context typically lacking in most media - a high profile choice, yes) and wood s lot (for eclecticism). Those are just the two that stand out to me from the other blogs I visit, all of which add something useful to the mix.
It's late, so if I ramble and don't make too much sense, I apologize.
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