‘As with writing, blogging is not simply formulating in words an idea already developed in one’s mind. It is also about connecting, developing and redefining half-baked ideas. When writing, I often go through the weblog archives to explore connections with what is already there. Reading and rereading what I wrote before shapes and changes what I’m about to write: I often find something unexpected or see patterns only in retrospect’.Efimova (2009. p 70)

Fig. 1. Dr Lilia Efimova – her Phd thesis is on blogging to support knowledge management in the workplace.

1. Somewhere to “park” emerging insights until the moment they are needed. Efimova (2009. p 75)
2. Doesn’t require much effort
3. Somewhere to park ideas
4. Reading and engaging with others to become aware of issues and themes
5. Topics accumulate and connections grew and things become clearer.
6. A set of sense-making practices
7. “Everyday grounded theory” Efimova (2009. p. 75)
8. Connecting multiple fragments
9. Getting into the writing flow
10. Strengthened by readers’ feedback
11. A channel for distribution
12. Publication additional motivation to document emergent ideas
13. A legitimate place to share thinking in progress
14. -ve when the need is to be extremely selective and focused. Efimova (2009. p. 80)
15. To collect in one place the fragmented bits relevant to my thinking Efimova (2009. 3.5.4)
16. Clusters of conversations
17. Conversations unfolding
18. A personal space and a community space simultaneously.
19. A personal narrative used to articulate and to organise one’s own thinking. (conversation with self. p 90?) around 4.3
20. An example of hypertext conversation. Efimova (2009. p. 129)
21. Weblogs provide a space that helps both to develop one’s own point of view and discuss it with others.
22. Bloggers present their ideas to the world, readers learn from them. Efimova (2009. p. getting things done. staying in touch)

• low-threshold creation of entries
• a flexible and personally meaningful way to organise and maintain them
• opportunities to retrieve, reuse and analyse blog content
• opportunities to engage with others.
• fitted in while working on something else
• providing a way to keep abreast of others ideas
• capturing ones’ own emergent insights
• clarifying matters for a public
• over time ideas on a topic accumulate and connections between them become clearer.
• feedback from readers turns blogging into a sense-making practice
• eventually an ideas is ‘ripe’ and ready to become part of a specific task.

Efimova (2008. p. 208)

Autoenthnography Or, how to write something of substance.

From Richardson (2000) via Lilia Efimova (2009. p. 39)

I’ve taken the view, with a lifetime of keeping a diary and 14 years blogging that I write whatever comes to mind as I put pen to paper or fingertips to the keyboard. There is a better way:

Substantive Contribution

Does this piece contribute to our understand of social life? Does the writer demonstrate a deeply grounded (if embedded) human world understanding and perspective?

Aesthetic Merit

Does this piece succeed aesthetically? Does the use of creative analytical practices open up the text, invite interpretive responses? Is the text artistically shaped, satisfying, complex, and not boring?

Reflexivity

How did the author come to write this? How was the information gathered? Ethical issues? How has the author’s subjectivity been both a producer and a product of this text?

Is there an adequate self-awareness and self-exposure for the reader to make judgements about the point of view? Do authors hold themselves accountable to the stands of knowing and telling of the people they have studied?

Impact

Does this affect me? Emotionally? Intellectually? Generate new questions? Move me to write? Move me to try new research practices? Move me to actions?

Lived Experience

Does this text embody a fleshed out sense of lived-experience? Does it seem “true” – a credible account of a cultural, social, or communal sense of the “real”?

REFERENCE

Efimova.L (2009) Passion At Work : Blogging practices of knowledge workers. Novay PhD Research Series, No. 24 (Novay/PRS/024)

Richardson, L. (2000). Evaluating ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 6 (2), 253-255

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