Monday, May 21, 2012

Records of Rebellion: An Annotated Bibliography About the Power of Blogs to Change the World


Here is a shot at my thesis:

Although blogging is primarily used as a mode of personal expression, this type of social media is becoming a tool for political activism and social change because it can reach a wide audience and is not heavily censored.

Amir-Ebrahimi, Masserat. “Transgression in Narration: The Lives of Iranian Women in

Cyberspace.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 4.3 (2008): 89-118. Print.


This is a scholarly article printed in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. The author of this article discusses how Iranian women have been breaking free of oppression in a society dictated by Sharia law through the renouncement of socially accepted modes of dress, such as veils, and also through the use of blogs as a way to openly discuss their lives. This article was sent to me by my cohort in crime, Ashley Lewis, from JSTOR. This article fits into my research because it gives a real life example of how blogging has been used as a mode of rebellion against orthodox social and political norms. Blogging was used by these Iranian women to give a true depiction of their lives so that people would be persuaded to support their cause of liberation from antiquated modes of social interaction.

Bryan, Alexander. The New Digital Storytelling: Creative Narratives with New Media.

Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011. Print.


            This book is written to those wanting to create literary material using forms of new media. The author talks about creating ebooks and also blog narratives. I found this book while I was searching Amazon.com for books related to blogging, and I thought that this book would tie well into my research because it discusses how blogs can be used as a medium to create literature that will affect a certain readership. I would use this book to talk about the power of blogs generally. 


Drezner, Daniel W., and Henry Farrell. “Introduction: Blogs, Politics and Power: A

Special Issue of Public Choice.” Public Choice 34.1/2 (2008): 1-13. Print.


            This is a scholarly article that was sent to me by Ashley Lewis from JSTOR. The authors of this article seek to give an introduction to the issue of how blogging is affecting politics. They seek to introduce the issue and talk generally about the questions that blogging is raising in relation to political change. This relates to my research because the article is giving a brief explanation of how blogs are being used to enact change on a broad scale in the political sphere.

Dwan, David. “Truth and Freedom in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Philosophy and

Literature 34.2 (2010): 381-393. Print.


            I found this scholarly article using the MLA Bibliography database. The article is about the definition of truth that Orwell promulgates throughout the book. This article is pertinent to my research because it relates to the ideas presented in Kirby’s article about the death of postmodern thought, and it can be related to the use of blogging to establish truth.

Esarey, Ashlely and Xiao Qiang. “Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere:

Below the Radar.” Asian Survey 48.5 (2008): 752-772. Print


This is a scholarly article that was sent to me by Ashley Lewis from JSTOR. This article discusses the private political discourse that is occurring in China through the medium of blogging. Bloggers are able to use satire and other means of literary form online to critique the government without being repressed. This fits into my research because the authors of the article describe how blogging is being used as a medium to affect the public’s view of the government in China.

Farrell, Henry, and Daniel W. Drezner. “The Power and Politics of Blogs.” Public Choice

134.1/2 (2008): 15-30. Print.


            I found this scholarly article on JSTOR in connection to another article by these same authors, which was referred to me by Ashley. This article is about how blogging is influential because the mass readership of blogs is journalists and other social elites that are able to influence decision-making in the political arena. This ties directly into my research about the how blogs can be used to influence and change political and social norms.

Kirby, Alan. “The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond.” Philosophy Now. Philosophy

Now Magazine, Nov./Dec. 2006. Web. 20 May 2012.


            This is an article that was sent to me by a blogger named Jonathan Erdman whom I contacted through by efforts with social discovery. This is an electronic copy of a scholarly article that describes how postmodern thought is being replaced by a new pedagogy, called “pseudo-modernism,” which has taken rise because of new technologies. The age of no Truth is being replaced by a world where meaning is created by the consumers of text. This fits into my research because the social media of blogging is an attributing factor to the shift in thought pertaining to literature and its use to affect a mass readership.

Rettberg, Jill Walker. Blogging: Digital Media and Society Series. Malden, MA: Polity

Press, 2008. Print.

            I found this scholarly monograph by searching the Harold B. Lee Library catalog. This book discusses the history of blogging and its implications in literature, journalism, and history. This book definitely ties into my research because it gives an overview of blogging and how it is being used in the world today.

Somulu, Oreoluwa. “’Telling Our Own Stories’: African Women Blogging for Social

Change.” Gender and Development 15.3 (2007): 477-489. Print.


            This is a scholarly article that was sent to me by Ashley Lewis from JSTOR. This article is about a study that was conducted about the subjects that African women are blogging about and how they relate to the social issues that are prominent on the African continent. This article is related to my research because it explores how blogs are being used to call for social change and rebel against the social norms of society.

Trilling, Lionel. “George Orwell and the Politics of Truth.” The Moral Obligation to be

Intelligent: Selected Essays. Ed. Leon Wieseltier. Evanston, IL: Northwestern

University Press, 2008. 259-74. Print.                      
           
I found this book of essays using Google Books. The essay about Orwell was mentioned in the selected list of bibliographical information and criticism in my edition of 1984. This essay is about another work of Orwell’s, Homage to Catalonia, but it describes what influenced Orwell’s perception of politics and I want to relate that to the form of government he is writing about in 1984.

My Reflection:

            This assignment really helped me see the importance of collaboration. While we were in the library on Friday, Ashley and I spent the hour in our cohort collaborating together on sources for each other’s papers. We both were able to dabble with the BYU library catalogue and many sites such as JSTOR and Google Scholar that led us to promising sites. Getting to search for this information helped me gain a clearer direction of where I wanted to go with my research. The articles that specifically talk about how blogging has been used for political activism and going against social norms made me want to discuss how blogging is being used in todays world to make a real difference in the world. 

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