Annotated bibliography – web 2.0 blogging literature

It is so typical that half way through my literature review and I have changed the way I am organising my thoughts on blogging.  Part of the change of heart was the realisation that I really (really!) needed to focus my research questions on my Masters thesis instead of the PhD that I hope to start working on next year.  So here is my new structure, 7 categories with the first centring on articles about the “newness” factor of blogging and web 2.0 as mechanism for collaboration and communication.

Adams, S. A. (2008). Blog-based applications and health information: Two case studies that illustrate important questions for Consumer Health Informatics (CHI) research. International Journal of Medical Informatics, In Press, Corrected Proof.

Weblogs (blogs), together with podcasts and wikis are part of the larger body of next-generation communication applications dubbed “web 2.0.” Within the specific area of health care, little attention has been devoted to understanding what applications are available to the lay public and how these are being used. In this study, a literature review on blogs and blogging practices was conducted, followed by case study analyses of two separate sites that use blogging tools to help patients and other lay web end-users record health-related experiences. This paper explores the diverse purposes for which blogging applications can be (or are being) used in relation to health and introduces the idea of “health goal-oriented” blogging. The discussion focuses on relevant informatics questions that arise with respect to the use of blogs and makes suggestions for subsequent research.

Blood, R. (2000). Weblogs: A History and Perspective. Journal. Retrieved from http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html

In 1998 there were just a handful of sites of the type that are now identified as weblogs (so named by Jorn Barger in December 1997). Jesse James Garrett, editor of Infosift, began compiling a list of “other sites like his” as he found them in his travels around the web. In November of that year, he sent that list to Cameron Barrett. Cameron published the list on Camworld, and others maintaining similar sites began sending their URLs to him for inclusion on the list. Jesse’s ‘page of only weblogs’ lists the 23 known to be in existence at the beginning of 1999. Suddenly a community sprang up. It was easy to read all of the weblogs on Cameron’s list, and most interested people did. Peter Merholz announced in early 1999 that he was going to pronounce it ‘wee-blog’ and inevitably this was shortened to ‘blog’ with the weblog editor referred to as a ‘blogger.’

Cohen, E., & Krishnamurthy, B. (2006). A short walk in the Blogistan. Computer Networks, 50(5), 615-630.

The increasingly prominent new subset of Web pages, called blogs differs from traditional Web pages both in characteristics and potential to applications. We explore three aspects of the blogistan: its overall scope and size, identification of emerging hot topics of discussion and link patterns, and implications both to blogs and applications such as search. Beyond blogs, we develop a general methodology of mining evolving networks and connections. The first part of our study is longitudinal–based on a five-week continuous fetch of a seed collection of nearly 10,000 blog URLs. The second part is based on a successive crawl of pages suspected to be blogs leading to a larger collection of several million URLs. The collection is examined for a variety of properties. We characterize blogs and study different facets of the link structure in blogs and its evolution over time, attributes of servers and domains that host many of the blogs including their IP addresses, and how blogs behave with respect to various HTTP/1.1 protocol issues. Inferences from our in-depth exploration are relevant to applications ranging from mining to hosting of blogs and other issues of relevance to the measurement community.

Dearstyne, B. W. (2007). Blogs, Mashups, & Wikis Oh, My! Information Management Journal, 41(4), 24-33.

This article focuses on Web 2.0, which refers to the perceived new generation of Web-based services that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users, and explains its relevance to records and information management (RIM) professionals. It says that Web 2.0 is changing the way people work and the way records and documents are created, exchanged and used and this trend poses new challenges for RIM professionals. Examples of Web 2.0 services include MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Second Life.

Gurak, L. J., Antonijevic, S., Johnson, L., Ratliff, C., & Reyman, J. (2004). Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture. Journal. Retrieved from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/introduction.html

During the past two decades, we have witnessed the introduction of many new digital spaces for writing and communicating, from hypertext, to chat rooms, to newsgroups, to discussion boards, to MOOS and MUDs, to wikis, to peer-to-peer file sharing networks. The proliferation of new spaces for communicating via the Internet has evoked scholarship in the fields of communication, rhetoric, composition, and writing studies from researchers seeking to address the social, rhetorical, and discursive implications. Recently, there has emerged a new object for study of great rhetorical impact: the weblog. The scholarly exploration of weblogs is still new, having up to this point taken place at primarily at conferences.

Secker, J., & Price, G. (2007). Libraries, social software and distance learners: blog it, tag it, share it! New Review of Information Networking, 39-52.

This paper describes a recent project funded by the University of London to explore how social software or Web 2.0 technologies can enhance the use of libraries by distance learners. LASSIE (Libraries And Social Software In Education) involves a team of librarians, learning technologists and archivists. The project first conducted an extensive literature review, which is available online. The literature review provides an overview of key social software and explores the current implementation of these tools by libraries. It also considers the key issues in supporting distance learners’ use of libraries and whether social software might provide solutions. The literature review was followed by several case studies to explore specific types of social software in practice. These included the use of social bookmarking for sharing resources, social software and online reading lists, blogging in the library community, the use of social networking sites and podcasting for information literacy support. LASSIE will be completed in December 2007 and a final report with results from the case studies and an updated literature review will be made available from the project website. One of the successes of the project has been to establish a project blog, which provides the project team with an opportunity to reflect on progress, but also to gather opinions from others in the field.

Wyld, D. C. (2008). Management 2.0: a primer on blogging for executives. Management Research News, 31(6), 448-483.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how corporate executives of companies are using blogging as a new communications channel. The paper presents an overview of the blogging phenomenon, placing it in context of the larger growth of Web 2.0 and user-generated content. The paper provides the reader with a primer on blogs and how they can be used effectively by executives, as well as looking at the importance of monitoring the blogosphere for what is being said by and about a company. Over 50 corporate CEOs were found who are presently engaged in blogging. The research also identifies companies where employees have been fired for blogging and presents best practices in blogging and blog policies. The principal limitation of the research is that as blogging is a rapidly growing and evolving area, the present results on executive blogging are accurate only for the moment. The implications of this research are that it provides the foundation for surveying not only the status of blogging by managers but also an agenda for blogging research, which might examine blogging behaviours, develop blog metrics and look toward the return on investment of blogging. The paper reveals the benefits of managerial blogging for both the company and the individual. It also examines issues concerned with human resources, financial disclosure and policy development that have arisen because of the rise of blogging within companies. The paper represents a timely review of a rapidly evolving social network and its associated communications technology, providing both management practitioners and academicians with insights into managing in a new age.