Sat 21 Oct 2006
Thanks to all who commented on my ideas for developing a taxonomy. I realised just now I missed out some important points in my first idea:
- Posts about faith practices, e.g. liturgies, prayers, dance, tai chi, etc, divided between posts about indidivual faith practices, and discussions about communal practices (e.g. worship)
- Discussions about God, Jesus and Spirit
- Posts about the Bible, incl. authority of Scripture
- Posts about Christian understandings of justice
- Posts on Christian missions, involving evangelism and church marketing
- Posts about being “emerging”, or “postmodern”
- And, using Driscoll’s labels, discussions around Church 1.0 and Church 2.0, including discussions about modern structures and debates on authority, doing theology, role of the ordained, etc.
- UPDATE: posts about events in personal/private lives
- UPDATE: posts about events in local faith communities
- UPDATE: talk about the nature of the medium itself – blogging, discussions, being an emerging church blogger
I believe these last three points are particularly important, and I feel really stupid for having left them out, not just because there are so many of these posts and discussions in the blogs in my sample, but also because they generate different types of discussions than in the other types of posts – in these discussions commenters become pastors, start doing a practice of pastoral ministry, that builds stronger sense of online community. More so than in the other posts. To leave these posts out of the research is y stupid. Should have picked up on that earlier.
October 21st, 2006 at 10:48
Paul
I’d be inclined to parse the list a litle more by including another category (which is more specific than the generic emerging emergent) to discussions about missions, praxis and dialogue with non-Christians (and a subset of that: actual posts that specifically generate dialogue with non-Christians). The discussions about missions and praxis do form an aspect of emerging/emergent, but Christian bloggers do discuss these things irrespective of whether they empathise and identify with Emerging or not.
October 21st, 2006 at 11:28
Mmm, yeah Phil, I have been thinking about that – and it’s a focus of discussion on a couple of blogs in the sample. I’m thinking it fits in the category of understanding Christian mission (fifth category in the list), and would probably be significant sub-set.
October 21st, 2006 at 17:32
Looks good. A diagram (clustering, network) of relationships between categories and weights of those relationships would be interesting.
October 21st, 2006 at 17:42
Yes, the personal stuff is important – that’s one of the main reasons why people return regularly to a blog, I think, because the writer seems real to them and they begin to care.
October 21st, 2006 at 19:02
I’m working on a diagram or two at the mo’ – mainly describing connections between bloggers through comments, trackbacks and blogrolls. The comment diagram will most hopefully be weighted according to types of discussions, too. I say “hopefully” because, well, it depends on how long it takes to do – some of these relationships can be made automatically trhough NVivo, others require pages and pages of reading.
October 21st, 2006 at 19:05
You’re right, Mary, and also because the personal stuff sems to be how the blogger kicks off their site – introducing themselves to the online world, rather than just launching into other online discussions. It’s like a big social more – you can’t just begin a blog without introducing yoruself first, and at length.
October 21st, 2006 at 20:21
Paul, do the blogs you’re surveying have the author’s intention for the blog clearly stated? Sometimes you see that in an early posting, sometimes in the “slogan” (“Reviews, reflections and rants of …”), sometimes in the “About this blog” link/page.
And if so, does it tally with the actual content?
October 21st, 2006 at 20:27
Sure do… in the subtitle “eg. reviews, reflections and rants of..” or in the “about this blog” or in the first post. Some of them don’t really, but it’s made clear as you read that they have an interest in EC stuff, by the bloggers listed in their blog roll, or the conversations started in the posts.
So for the most part bloggers want to say to the world: “This is an EC blog” while others tend to say “This is just about me… oh an a lot about EC”.
Why you ask, mon frere?
October 25th, 2006 at 14:14
There was a point, but it eludes me currently.
I think I was wondering about how blogs change over time. For example, there are some blogs that interact with EC material but are not overtly EC from the point of view of the author. However, because they are heavily linked to from EC blogs they get subsumed in that community if they are looked at from one direction.
I think Scott McKnight’s blog is like that. He seems to be a critical friend of the EC “movement” yet not part of it, and in fact mediates between it and other communities. However, EC blogs link heavily to it, and if you only read EC blogs you might consider his more in the EC camp than it actually is. The EC bit happened over time.
October 25th, 2006 at 15:15
Hey Stephen, I’ve been thinking about that a lot too. There are a small section of my sample who call themselves “bloggers about but not in” the EC. Yet many of their comments and trackbacks come from EC bloggers, so to say “I’m not in it, I just talk about it!” is needing to get more intentional.
Then again, the EC does have the philosophy of “If you’re here, you’re a member”, so the mere fact they’re engaged in the conversation sends out the message that they’re “in”, unless of course they blog actiely against it, which so many bloggers do.