fishers, surfers and casters

A totally insightful and helpful book. As a student of narrative theology and narrative therapy, Campbell’s descriptions of religious community as story-based organisms relates well to my basis of thought, and helps me consider my own current analysis of blogging communities as bloggers connected by story, and creating story together. I’m thinking a lot about how members of online communities, especially bloggers, present themselves online as a product, but also a journey toward, identity construction. How a blogger sees their blog as part of the continuing story of a blogging community may be helpful in my sorting out my thoughts.

Her introductory history of Internet is concise and thorough, and provides a sound background to her research ahead. Campbell’s descriptions of religious community, and the outline of the four s of Christian community also make for the reader an easy entry into thinking about how online religious community may be led.

I’ve been thinking a lot, and have been asked to write a journal article about, the impact of online community on offline community, and Campbell’s last four chapters give me a great starting point. Definitely, I have also found that for bloggers online community can only be a supplement to offline community, but that doesn’t mean the impact is insignificant. She has confirmed my wonderings about how online community offers a sense of belonging which is “glocalised” and offers a sense of play – a safe place to explore how “real” church could be.

Finally, the author’s delving into how the participants in her study use email text to make visualisations (especially emoticons) raises my interest in the changing nature of discourse that online communication is facilitating. Emoticons, text that uniquely express emotion, are freely encouraged. It’s easier to offer someone a textual “hug” in an email than a real hug in a church service. Yet both are received with equal significance. This is one of the reasons, I think, that people conceive of online communication as far more easily intimate.

Technorati tags: Heidi Campbell, online religion.

Back in 2003 I had a conversation with someone in Finland about seasons’ colours. We talked about how in his part of the world it’s green in summer, white in winter, while in my end of the universe it’s green only in winter, brown in summer. Last year I saw the same person is Sweden, and I was reminded of our conversation, and told him that since the drought it’s now brown all year round.

Today the weather report told us to brace ourselves for fires and smoke until March. The driest year on record, coupled with the hottest average monthly temperatures for October through to December, we should expect these fires as part of our lives. The sky is a cigarette-grey. An LA smog with rays of crimson sun breaking through. Summer has a new colour this year. But it aint the sky-blue, sand-yellow, sea-green or surf-white that the world paints Australia’s summer with.

It’s the colour of grief, of desperation.

In these times we pray for rain.

Yesterday I drove through Victoria’s lush new smoky haze (big bushfires right now going through the north-east of the state, but that’s another story) to attend a memorial service for Br Walter Smith, held in a Catholic school in Melbourne. There I saw one of my old teachers, and three old guys from my year. They had all read my blog post. Having not seen them for over a decade, I was surprised that they had seen and read my blog. They didn’t. Apparently if you google Br Walter Smith you will find me right at the top of the list, and then again at number six and twelve for some reason. My old school chums had googled him to get details of the memorial and found me. I was still surprised.

But not as much as when the service started. The first eulogist quoted me. The third eulogist quoted one line from the post and used it as the theme of his message. After the memorial strangers approached me, thanked me for the online tribute, introduced me to other people, offered me their prayers and wishes. It was both heartening and a little uncomfortable. I didn’t expect such a readership. I was humbled.

Thanks to those old school friends and new friends made yesterday who have taken an interest in this blog since I posted on my lost hero. How this medium connects those with common stories and common sadnesses. It’s a gift.

Bloody excellent to catch up with my old mates. We sat around and talked about life, work and children. It felt like we were back at school in the eighties, pretending to be thirty-something career/parents, after having watched an episode of Thirtysomething. It helped keep the memory of the old man alive.

I’ve been reading Burn and Parker’s book, Analysing Media Texts, where there is one chapter on analysing internet sites. An interesting term was read in this chapter, “hypertextual depth”, a phrase I’ve not read or heard before.

Jay Lemke (2002) distinguishes between two notions of text here – the semiotic text, or sequence of signs presented to the reader; and the meaning-text, which is the reader’s interpreted movement through this sequence. In hypertext, Lemke argues, the semiotic text presents more or less explicit trajectories; while the interpretation of meaning by the reader proceeds as traversals. These notions are related to Kress and van Leeuwen’s idea of reading path – that particularly in the context of visual design, there is a double structure in which the text offers implied routes around the design, while the reader engages with this to design their own reading (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996).

[pp. 31-32, bold text replaces italicised text in original]

I’m thinking about hypertext in blogs, and what it does to the relationship between writer, text and reader. So many of us argue, to the point it is general consensus, common sense, that hypertext increases the autonomy of the reader. While the book confines the reader to traverse the text, left to right (or right-left, up-down, let’s not be eurocentric), hypertext frees the reader to leave the page to another place, to return at their leisure.

We also argue that hypertext constructs the roads on which we travel the internet. My Google Analytics account tells me that most readers who visit this site get here by a link from another site (including google.com). Without four little letters, href, we would not have google.com or technorati.com to give us our readership.

But while it is the reader who traverses the information superhighway, it is the writer who sets the path. So my question is: when entire side-bars, headers are filled with links to www.somewhereelsebuthere.net, and it’s hard to find a post without one link to, why do bloggers link?

• Do we intend to make our pages a portal to the online world of our own readership? If so, do we place links in order to make an impression (or expression) of ourselves? Do we know that, do we encourage that, or are we discouraged from, placing a link to another site, or another blog, will say something about who we are as bloggers?
• Do we link out of a call to some sort of etiquette? Is it wrong to post abotu an issue, mention a book or a person’s name, without a link to a relevant site? If so, do we, can we, expect some sort of return?
• Are there any other reasons?
• How do we expect readers will use links? If we let readers go, can we expect them back?

Technorati tags: Analysing Media Texts, hypertext.