Blogging has always been a difficult form of expression for me, probably because of the nature of its creation. It requires one to sit down and write, although writing itself is not difficult, I find it less entertaining than to make a video or post a photo.

 

However, Adrian Miles provided an interesting insight about the uses of blogging which got me thinking. He states that a blog can be used in teaching to “nurture peer support” and “assist in idea creation”. This idea seems very reminiscent of google docs, a platform that allows one to write content and then have others comment, edit and respond to it. However, the advantage of a blog is that it is public, thus it allows a network literate audience to get involved with the idea generating process.

Thus, to find a place for blogging in my own life, I decided to post about the content I am creating in other forms, using it as a springboard to share the content and reach my audience. The reason this is particularly useful to me is because i spread myself thin across many different social media outlets, and blogging could bring it all together; Adrian Miles has acknowledged this: “The key advantage of network literacy is that different services or websites are all able to communicate with each other.”  

For example I used one of my posts as a behind the scenes pinboard, where I placed content about the creative process, production and scripting of a video. The post can be found here. It links together images and video to give a visual overview of the process and facilitate the engagement with the final product.

The issue however is that there is not that much reciprocity in this arrangement, whereas most social media or content sharing sites will provide you with either “views” or a quick and easy “like” feature, blogging forces users to comment – which is comparably less common. For example, I did another post about my song Sick Of Citrus, which brought together audio, via soundcloud with the instagram post of the song, however there was no indicator of an audience response. This is the reason I prefer to use other mediums.

However I do believe that using blogging as a secondary medium could work. Julia Erhart in her ‘Mr G is deffinately bringin’ Sexy back’ study, explores how Chris Lilley uses multiple platforms to communicate with his audience and build expectation. Because he had a large following on TV, its easier to use online content as a springboard. Hopefully I could do something similar between my blog and YouTube channel.

Overall, my blogging experience has been very developmental, I am not yet entirely sold on the idea of using blogs, however I am willing to experiment with the platform at a hyperlink springboard for other contents.

 

References:

 

Miles, Adrian. Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning [online]. Screen Education, No. 43, 2006: 66-69. Availability:<http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=374037672250272;res=IELAPA>ISSN: 1449-857X. [cited 10 Apr 16].

 

Miles, Adrian. Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge [online]. Screen Education, No. 45, 2007: 24-30. Availability:<http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/documentSummary;dn=805521387210748;res=IELAPA>ISSN: 1449-857X. [cited 10 Apr 16].

 

Erhart, Julia. (2014). ‘Mr G is deffinately bringin’ Sexy back’: characterizing Chris Lilley’s YouTube audience. Continuum, 28(2), pp.176-187.