My Blogging Journey.

There is the inevitability of blog posts tasks in the duration of the Communication and Media studies course. Currently, I am a second year student in my second semester and through this, I have developed a blog that I have used, and will continue to use in the years to come. People always find it intriguing when I say that I construct blog posts for my assessments, and honestly I wouldn’t want to have it any other way. This approach to writing has aided my ability to construct together a plethora of ideas in one platform that I call my own blog, Danasaid@wordpresses.com.

Prior to taking ‘Media Audience Place’, the BCM240 course, I have enrolled in many other media courses that have been catalyst of my blogging and online presence. Reflecting back on past semesters through my blogging career, there are many mistakes and learning curves that I have come across that have constructed my blog to what it is today. This post is going to reflect on my process and the processes that I have entailed in my journey of blogging.

Throughout this semester, I have found myself more engrossed in technology and multiple platforms, but with this, I am also aware of how they are intertwined my own personal media space. I am now regularly checking my twitter feed, checking the notifications on my WordPress whilst simultaneously flicking through different devices such as my phone and laptop. This has enabled me as an online user, to connect with the audience. Blogging is something I enjoy as I am intrigued by the topics each week as they allow me to think beyond my media space and take note of the world around me. This allows me to have my own take on certain topics and enlighten the audience of the concepts each week through my own perspective. I would say that I am happy with my blog as it reflects me, and how I have developed as a blogger. It has changed over time to suit me as a person and me on my journey.

(Sourced From: http://blog.mainstreethost.com/five-lessons-on-writing-and-reading-i-learned-after-a-year-in-blogging-with-gifs )

Each week I would reflect on the topic after I had watched the lecture and decide what angle I would focus my posts at. Sometimes that involved researching to find appropriate articles, having class discussions or just having a strong interest toward a particular topic. But this assessment isn’t just about the content, it was about the overall blog. I had never been faced with this and it enabled me to think critically about how I presented myself to the public. Each week I would post my blogs to twitter and to the BCM240 hashtag to share my progress to other students, but also to the public sphere. This was an appropriate method; however, I feel I should have provided more tags in the WordPress site, of what I was concentrating on, which would have allowed for a wider audience reach. Taking note on my statistics, I became aware that I did not in fact get many views, and I assume the majority of those views were from fellow BCM students with my highest day being 9 views this semester. In this, I have made 39 different blog posts, I use 7 different categories, and I have used 51 tags, received 19 comments and reached a total of 574 views.

(Sourced from my twitter: https://twitter.com/DanaSaidwhat )

A blog post by Kali Hawlk discusses the way in which to capture an audience in blogging. The main points were to offer serious value, serve your reader, create content worth sharing and make it easy for your audience. A point she made was;

Do not stop sharing your experiences, stories, ideas, and thoughts. These lend personality and spark to your content, but package them correctly and deliver them in a way that is meaningful for your reader.

I thought this was relevant to bogging as we were able to talk about experiences, not only our own but the people whom we were interviewing. But we also had to keep that at a level that was for our readers and not only ourselves.

Forming my online writing identity helped me as a blogger to share my own personal ideas. I noticed this as some weeks my ideas were conveyed in the Media Audience Place platform. This meant that my ideas as a writer were read and taken into consideration.

Dana Said conducted some memory research with her sister with some interesting findings, including that we tend to remember more readily things that we have some connection to. This is a standard claim for memory research that makes sense, and it’s the reason most people try to use memorable phrases for computer passwords–because otherwise the prospect of actually being able to recall them is limited. As I had this embarrassing experience this morning, Dana’s post really spoke to me.

A blog post Dan Shewan states that to write an effective blog post you have to first plan the post, and then write one that is interests to you. During this course, this is definitely something that could be done as the topic ranges are so vast and you are able to explore multiple aspects to a single concept.

My blog also went through some changes in which I changed the design and layout, adding a cover photo including the colour scheme and the font. I had also had a twitter widget on from previous semesters but I have now added an ‘about me’ widget and a ‘follow’ button. But overall I have just changed the layout around to what I think looks the best for my blog by playing around with the side bar and headers.

(Sourced from: http://www.alabouroflife.com/2014/12/10-favourite-blog-gifs.html )

Overall this project was a satisfying experience and I feel it has helped me professionally as a writer, to improve my blogging and communication skills. It definitely made me think critically about the tasks each week and the implications of media space in everyday life. This makes me want to further explore my own media platforms and expresses my online presence with my own ideas and concepts. The freedom of each week and the fact that there is unlimited possibilities in a way that I have spoken about Television shows and movies I watch, constructed numerous interviews, performed my own ethnographic research and even took photographs of people in the public sphere. It is also a portfolio of my work that I will continue to use in the years to come.

References: 

Hawlk, K 2014, ‘4 ways to increase audience engagement’, shareaholic, 26 August, accessed 5 Ocboter 2015 https://blog.shareaholic.com/increase-audience-engagement/

Shewan, D 2015, ‘How to write an awesome blog Post in five steps, Word Stream, 9 February, accessed 5 October 2015  http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/02/09/how-to-write-a-blog-post

Facebook is doing what now?

(Image sourced from: http://visible.agency/services/social-media-marketing/facebook-marketing/)

Facebook is a social media tool that enables you to present an edited version of yourself to your friends, co-workers, family or even the public. But the ways in which Facebook is licenced may make you reconsider what you post and what display about yourself to the public sphere. Facebook, as an easily accessible platform, has considerable privacy issue and owner rights that have a cause of concern for the users.

As the Facebook community is growing and there are more and more users every day (Approximately 1.4 Billion), the definition of a “safe” community can vary between nations and individual preference. An updated community guideline on Facebook states what behaviour is deemed as appropriate. Due to the constant updates of these guidelines, this shows that through changes in technology, legislations and attitudes towards social networks, policies and procedures associated with Facebook are never seen as complete.

It’s a challenge to maintain one set of standards that meets the needs of a diverse global community.” … “For one thing, people from different backgrounds may have different ideas about what’s appropriate to share—a video posted as a joke by one person might be upsetting to someone else, but it may not violate our standards.

The issues at hand for protection or rules and regulations can include factors such as nudity, graphic imagery, glorified violence and other things that could potential cause harm. Anyone who breaches these rules will get their posts taken down or have their account blocked or suspended. This is to protect the privacy of its users and minimise the explicit content they could potentially be exposed too. But with this, Facebook still relies on the ability of its users to declare if something is inappropriate by them reporting the post that violates the guidelines. As stated before, this can vary between people because human judgment and sensitivity can react differently to particular content. Facebook still self regulates and they monitor the user’s use of the platform.

In an article by the Sydney Morning Herald, Asher Moses discusses the implications of Facebook in terms of privacy and what information Facebook is entitled too. It was stated that data is collected to optimise the users experience with the platform, and make it better suited to them, but this could also mean potentially violating their privacy. This includes basing advertisements around a user’s browser history to make ads suited to them. In theory, this is a respectable idea for a few groups of concern including Facebook, advertisers and the user themselves, but it’s the allegation of how much information they unravel about a person.

References:

Lapowsky, I 2015, ‘New Facebook rules show how hard it is to police 1.4 Billion users, Wired, 16 March, accessed 4 October 2015 http://www.wired.com/2015/03/facebook-guidelines/

Moses, A 2014, ‘Facebook ‘erodes and idea of privacy”, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 8, accessed 4 October 2015 http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/facebook-erodes-any-idea-of-privacy-20130408-2hgkm.html