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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