I start by outlining four phases in bloggers’ awareness of and engagement with audiences. We might add the Scollon term, interaction order, to these. Naming them as phases may be somewhat misleading, as it connotes that there is some sort of progression from phase one onward. I call them phases as there is fluidity between them. Not all bloggers have necessarily occupied all phases, though some occupy more than one, or all of them, at some point in time.

I call the first the autotelic stage, borrowing the term from Kris Cohen (2004). A number of participants interviewed mentioned how they were attracted to blogs as a way of developing or practising a writing style and regimen. In blogging they saw a tool for writing that was much like a personal diary, yet in an exposed environment the challenge of writing for the interests of others is noted. They may be aware of a number of people who read their site, yet the main motivation is for an imagined audience, publishing written work for its own sake. Articles are posted in order to get a thought, story or opinion “out there”. These articles are posted erratically if not seldom, and are self-contained (i.e. not serialised). Tags or categories may be used, if only for the use of the blogger him- or herself, to order entries as an archive. The discourses in place, such as blog titles and texts contained in side-bars, are personal, in that they are used to create a picture of the blogger.

The second is what I call the networking phase. Here the blogger is more aware of their site’s readership, and is motivated to post more regularly. The writer is likely to more explicitly encourage comments and discussion, post articles on particular issues and themes, and either alert readers to upcoming, or apologise for previous, hiatuses in blog postings. The blog’s design and its content would not only promote the blogger but his or her readership, including blog rolls, links to information about groups and organisations that he or she may be involved in. Both posts and surrounding text contains both personal and professional content, and there may be much “filter” information, i.e. lists of links to other places on the web of interest to the blogger and known readers. Bloggers are also likely to use devices to gain more information about their readership, such as the use of side-bar poll programs and comment-based voting activities.

Next is the community phase. Here blog posts illicit long strings of comments by regular known readers. The interaction order changes somewhat as commenters respond not just to blog posts, but to other comments. Bloggers are likely to compose moderation instructions, and enforce them in a variety of ways. User registration functions are likely to be in place. Posts are less likely to be personal in favour of discussion on public issues, and are more likely to be regular, and sometimes serial. Guest bloggers are a feature, for when the blogs’ owner (or owners) wants to take a break, or introduce a new discussion topic that’s best started by a known reader. The content of surrounding text and design feature less personal information in favour of creating a group identity.

This last phase is hardly discrete, as I believe all bloggers would occupy this phase at the same time as any other. Yet there is a level of interaction other than that between blogger and their known or imagined audience. The range of blogs read by those interviewed in the sample is assumed to be more expansive than the reach of the bloggers’ own work. Bloggers bring an understanding of the global emerging church network home to their readers. Yet, rather than being at its centre, bloggers are motivated to remain “at the edge” of the conversation, focussing on issues important to them: theology of mission, faith in popular culture, alternative worship practices, technology in faith practices, etc. Bloggers see their relationship with readers as a niche in the wider emerging church blogosphere, and aim more to cement it rather than expand it.

Scollon and Wong Scollon (2004) note that social action occurs at the intersection of three factors: the interaction order, the discourses in place, and the historical bodies of the participants involved. The authors give the name “nexus analysis” to the study of discourses at this intersection.

The interaction order describes the structure of relationships between participants in the environment in which the interaction takes place. In a classroom setting, for example, interaction is structured according to the relationship between a teacher and the students in the class. Communication in a classroom is centred around the teacher, who presents teaching material to the body of students and receives questions and comments from individual students. While there is communication between students in a classroom, through conversations in whispers and notes passed between desks, these conversations are deprivileged in contrast to the "official" communication of the teacher.

The discourses in place include not just communications between people in the interaction order, but other forms of text that exist in the environment. Continuing the example of the classroom setting, these texts may range from posters in walls through the clothing of students to the arrangement of furniture and the use of communication technologies. These discourses inform the physical shape of the interaction order, and which communications are privileged over others. For example, in a classroom where all students are facing the same direction (toward the teacher), communications between students are deprivileged below communications between teacher and student. Likewise, text written behind the teacher (on a chalkboard or projected on a screen, is considered more "official" than text on posters on other walls or written on student desks.

The historical body describes the set of assumptions, skills, values, beliefs and motivations that each participant brings to the setting of the social interaction. An example of this would be the desire for retention or promotion within the institution that drives the teacher to deliver a quality performance in the lecture theatre, while some students’ attention is dependent on their as yet unfulfilled desire to choose an appropriate major in the degree course. The term “body” as used here may be problematic, as it connotes something physical, and in the physical world we bring our physical bodies into all our interactions. It may be helpful to consider the “historical body” as something like “the body of experience” that comprise part of the context in which interactions occur.

Scollon and Wong Scollon argue that just as each of these factors impinge of the nature and design of the discourses at their intersection, they are likewise not constant. Thus there is a cycle of change as each factor interacts, which the writers name semiotic cycles. Nexus analysis, then, is the study of how each of these cycles inform and change other cycles to aggregate change in the relationships of people in a setting of interaction, and nature of communication therein.

But Moritz does offer a criticism of the emerging church that I would like to comment on. He asserts that while the emerging church rhetoric seems against systematic theology, it falls into the trappings of the discipline in its conversations:

It would seem that the vast majority of Emerging thinkers who reject systematic theology are faced with the same conundrum, in that every in-house Emerging discussion over theological matters that I have witnessed so far – be it in books, on blogs, in sermons or in lectures – has transpired predominantly via prose. In this way Emergents make constant use of the language and categories of systematic theology while at the same time denying its legitimacy and denouncing it as irredeemably modern. If one it to take seriously the Emerging Church’s focus on praxis informing theology, I would ask why this should be the one exception. [...]

[...] If we cannot speak of God how can we assert so confidently that none of our categories apply to God? I fear that some Emergents might be wandering down the road of Nominalism while insisting they are Critical Realists. The rejection of modernism notwithstanding, theological and philosophical incoherency is still not a virtue – even among the most hard-lined postmodernist philosophers. (p. 33)

I have to hand it to Moritz – it is a fair observation. Emerging church blogs (for example) do tend at time to delve into sophisticated diatribes about many issues that a large number of us would fine academic and perhaps inaccessible. However, though a fair observation, it doesn’t make it a worthy criticism of the emerging church at large.

Firstly, his knowledge of emerging church thinking is limited to “books, blogs, in sermons or in lectures” where he sees discourses akin to the systematic theology we find in bible college. Well, d’uh. If you’re going to look at books, lectures, sermons and even blogs, you’re going to get that kind of prose. It’s the nature of writing. Writing is linear, logical, rational and propositional. emerging church writers are going to write like a systematic theologian, because they’re writing for an audience that wants to consider emerging church theology by reading. If Moritz wanted a statement of emerging church theology by listening to music or visiting an art installation or mission project then he would read something altogether different.

Secondly, I think the emerging church, by and large, is not biased against systematic theology as much as it has reservations about the place of systematic theology in the contemporary church. As Mary Hess puts it well, “systematic theology leaves people out of the conversation” and its the systematic theology conversation that bears its great weight in thinking and talking about God in the church. For “Emergents” (Moritz’s term, not mine), systematic theology may inform the church’s present and future, but it does not make systematic theologians the church experts, the first go-to for advice and decision-making. If other media can carry other types of thinking about God and church and discipleship and faith and etc then “Emergents” will embrace them, in order to listen out for other voices and bring them to the conversation.

What do you reckon?

I did confess to them that most of my achievements had happened in the few days before the panel presentation. One particular area of inquiry that had been discussed and queried last year was about the use of graphic images in blog posts and home pages. I had done some readings on the text-image relations but hadn’t found much that was useful. I was feeling a little apprehensive that questions would arise this time round and I would be terribly unprepared, and I carried that worry to bed with me. During the night I had a dream that I was trying to write my thesis but I was disturbed by a stream of poultry that kept jumping out the computer screen. The chickens, geese and turkeys woke me up at about 2am.

I arose, opened my computer and searched the hard drive for “joyous Christian chick”. A saved copy of the home page of Jen’s musings opened up. I wondered, “joyous” is such a Christian word: it’s found in hymns and prayers and spoken often in churches, yet it isn’t heard much outside those buildings. On the other hand, “chick” is such a street word, so rarely heard in church. Jen’s site is very pink, there are pictures of her scattered around the place, enjoying clear drinks, wedding white dresses, etc. It’s a girlie site. And she appears he feminist in her blog, posting on women’s issues and projects, both locally and around the world.

What Jen’s musings does so well is an interplay between fields of textual discourse: church vs street and girlishness vs feminism. I have found variations of this intertextual play particularly in the arrangement of graphic imagery and text in nearly all blogs. I have found opposites being played with often, including centre/margins, work/pleasure, inside/outside, freedom/imprisonment, dirt/art, youth/age, tradition/heresy, intimacy/distance, even sacrament/profanity.

And I can’t say that they are just play, with text, meanings, attitudes. They all seem to be part of a large, quite conscientious, campaign to shift modes of meaning in religious discourse.

Here are some more examples, taken from Livingroom and Lionfish. throughout the course of my study I will be spending a lot of time looking at the types of meanings that are intended to be generated for audiences, and how they involve some sort of “play”, albeit part of some conscientious project, with different forms of discursive practice, all within a larger discursive realm (being the blogosphere of course).