Thursday, 26 June 2008
BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | North East Wales | Blogger fined for 'menacing' rant
BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | North East Wales | Blogger fined for 'menacing' rant:
"A blogger who 'let off steam' about the way he was treated by police has been convicted of posting a grossly offensive and menacing message.
Gavin Brent, 24, from Holywell, Flintshire, was fined £150 with £364 costs by magistrates at Mold.
The court heard Brent had been charged with theft offences - which have yet to be dealt with - and posted a message about a police officer's new-born baby..."
BBC NEWS | Technology | Blogger arrests hit record high
BBC NEWS | Technology | Blogger arrests hit record high:
"More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments, says a report.
Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report."
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
My honours presentation
I received the feedback sheets for my honours presentation yesterday. I just wonder how two of the examiners could observe the same presentation and come to such diverse conclusions. Here's a little of what they had to say.
On the matter of the presentation of a critical argument or rationale:
"Candidate does not appear to have fully absorbed some of the theoretical ideas he discussed."
On the other hand:
"Demonstrated a sophisticated grasp of the theoretical perspectives on the thesis topic. In particular, the ???? and limitations of Foucaultian concepts. Strong justification of critical theory to thesis question."
Then there was;
"[Supporting/substantiating material] not always clearly related to the argument" which was countered by "claims and assumptions made in the presentation were well supported by reference to concrete instances and cases, and the appropriate scholarly literature."
I'll take the feedback on board without making too much of either the negative or positive. For me it shows two things. First, there are no right or wrong answers, just different perspectives. Second, getting good grades in uni is a bit of a lottery. One person's advice is another's prohibition. Get over it, move on.
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Started writing for real
I started writing today. A tentative beginning dipping my toe into powerful waters thus:
I turn my attention now to how Foucault’s theories of the emergence of power, found in The subject and power, help explain the processes which led to Armstrong being fired.I'm planning to show how commercial and legal discourses provide explanations to her dismissal and then develop a more complex understanding of the emergence of the various power structures in and around her workplace.
I have 15 000 words to write and only wrote 56 today. If I can punch out 300 words a day I'll be on target to finish by mid-September. This will give me close to a month to complete final edits and prepare the introduction and conclusion.
Saturday, 21 June 2008
Writing my thesis part two
While I'm on the subject I'll start with tidying up the introduction I've already written. At least if I know what I'm going to argue it'll make my job a little easier. I'll then tidy up the piece I wrote about surveillance and then move onto power and subjectivity.
Writing my thesis
I was going to take some time off between first and second semester. Now instead I'm going to start writing on Tuesday. My plan is to write a paragraph a day (about 250 words) for 5 days a week. In 12 weeks I'll have my thesis written. It's a simple plan but one I'm confident of achieving as it will allow time for research, reading, and other activities.
Friday, 20 June 2008
Technologies of the self
In Technologies of the Self Foucault states:
"[In ancient Greece] it was generally acknowledged that it was good to be reflective, at least briefly...Writing was also important in the culture of taking care of oneself. One of the main features of taking care involved taking notes on oneself to be reread, ...and keeping notebooks in order to reactivate for oneself the truths one needed. Socrates' letters are an example of this self-exercise" (p. 27).Foucault continues:
"Taking care of oneself became linked to constant writing activity. The self is something to write about, a theme or object (subject) of writing activity...this is not a modern trait born of the Reformation...it is one of the most ancient Western traditions" (p. 27).And then:
"This genre of epistles shows a side apart from the philosophy of the era. The examination of conscience begins with this letter writing. Diary writing comes later" (p. 30)
Foucault refers here to what he later describes as the hupomnema, the writing of the self into being.
Foucault, M. (1988). Technologes of the Self. In L. Martin, H. Gutman & P. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Press.
Monday, 16 June 2008
Theorizing surveillance: the panopticon and beyond
Link to a review and preview of Theorizing surveillance: the panopticon and beyond.
Sunday, 15 June 2008
Comments about dooce on MetaFilter
Here's a link to a significant body of comments about Heather Armstrong's dismissal.
Friday, 13 June 2008
Panopticon.com: online surveillance and the commodification of privacy | Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media | Find Articles at BNET.com
Surveillance and the capitalist state | Giddens
Giddens, A. (1995). Surveillance and the capitalist state. In A contemporary critique of historical materialism, 2nd Edn. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Giddens defines surveillance as two connected processes of accumulation of information and of the supervision of the activities of subordinates in a collective. He believes that information gathering is a prime generator of power.
Human beings are knowledgable agents acting within "unacknowledged conditions" and "unintended consequences" of their actions (p. 171).
Whilst he recognises that Foucault connected the abolition of the violence of the spectacle with the rise of capitalism, he maintains that Foucault's connection between the factory and the prison were too close to be sustained. Rather, he notes that workplaces are not, as with prisons, "total institutions" (a phrase he credits to the work of Goffman) in which resistance may develop. As a result Foucault's "docile bodies" become not so docile after all and become knowledgeable agents. (p. 173)
He notes that the freedom of labour in capitalist systems are really just a sham and create the exploitation of workers through more subtle means, but he points out that the rise of "mere bourgeois freedoms" have lead to the development of genuine gains in judicial reforms allowing and encouraging the formation of organised labour movements which have challenged the hegemony of capitalism.
Giddens maintains that Foucault's ideas about the sequestration of prisoners become more a comment about the parts of capitalist society that commodify, regulate, and smooth time, removing from our day-to-day lives those aspects which are directly connected to the ebb and flow of nature. (p. 173)
Despite his criticism of Foucault, Giddens recognises the importance of surveillance to studies of capitalism. He observes that "classical social theory" - and by that I assume he refers to Marxism - did not recognise the threat to personal liberties from systems of surveillance. (p. 174)
Finally he points to what he sees as the oppressive potential for a combining of a Taylorist supervision of workers with an information collection mechanisms that result in anonymous "technical control" (p. 176).
Thursday, 12 June 2008
Blogging and employment law
Caslon Analytics Guide contains a useful section entitled Censorship in the workplace that contains a number of references to articles on blogging and employment law. These articles are situated within legal discourses and are supplemental to Bruce Barry's analysis in Speechless.
Dooced arhive | Armstrong
Didn't really need to do the last half dozen posts. Here's the dooced archives which contain all the main posts relating to Armstrong's dismissal.
About | Armstrong
In an "About" archive, Armstrong self-describes as "...that girl who lost her job because of her website."
Unemployed & Unrepentant | Armstrong
Armstrong created her own Unemployed & Unrepentant masthead. Indicative of struggle and contestation against her previous employer.
Tell it to Their Face for Christ's Sake | Armstrong
A post-dismissal explanation of the process of the firing providing some background about the Asian database administrator.
Interesting to notice the intransigent, defiant tone of Armstrong's writing.
Things I Don't Necessarily Need to Know | Armstrong
Here Armstrong explains that her work knew about a health problem she was having just before her firing. She also mentions again the Asian database administrator.
I mention this only because Armstrong raises the health issue in one of her post-firing posts.
Rant Rant Rant Rant Rant Rant, Part 2 | Armstrong
This is the first evidence in the archives of Armstrong being aware that management in her company had been made aware of the existence of her blog. I quote here the salient piece:
"You, the anonymous person who sent an email to each Vice President of my company, all 10 of them, informing them of my recent dissatisfaction, if you thought you were being all sneaky and shit, that you were exposing me and my evil ways, I just want to say, well, thank you. Now that everyone at my office knows I'm evil, including the CEO who was cc'd on the email, it's like a huge fucking weight off of my shoulders! Now it's just a matter of which VP I publicly crucify next!"
I have something to say | Armstrong
A more general post that complains about the failings of both herself and her colleagues.
Intimidation | Armstrong
Heather Armstrong rails against a fellow employee (it appears to be a supervisor) about the way she talks with her hands.
How to Annoy Me | Armstrong
Heather Armstrong ran a series of posts called How to annoy me and in this she continues her attacks on the Asian database administrator.
Armstrong's pre-dismissal posts
Here is a post from just before Heather B. Armstrong was fired in February 2002. It's entitled Reasons the Asian database administrator is so fucking annoying.
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Understanding Deleuze | Colebrook
Deleuze insists "ask...not what a text means but how it works" (p. xxxii).
"In order to begin to read and respond to an event we need to see its underlying problem" (p. xxxiv). The eye is the response to a problem of how to deal with light. A date in history is the confluence of all sorts of events and series of events.
"For Deleuze...we can only really really think or respond to problems if we do not accept the current terminology and orthodoxy of the problem" (p. xxxv).
Existentialism is a way of saying that there is no fundamental human nature but rather, human beings are nothing other than processes of decision" (p. xxxvi). We are "'radically free'" according to Sartre. In my words, we are defined by our decisions.
Phenomonolgy suggests that a human world only exists because humans make it a meaningful project and there is no world without language. We have language only because we have projects; human life is essentially creative.
On Deleuze being difficult to understand:
"If thinking and human life have no fixed essence, and if thinking is the effect of forces that are not decided by thought itself, then we need to produce a style of writing that constantly produces problems. Instead of just accepting the questions and terms within whcih a culture already operates, we need to look at (and transform) the assumptions, propositions, distinctions or differences upon which a system of thought relies."True thinking must go beyond images of thought and overturn our terminologies and differences.
"All life is constant becoming...we need to do away with the idea that nature merely is while man decides his being" (p. xlii). All of nature is a constant process of decision in creative response to forces it confronts; as part of nature we are shaped by (a part of?) a multiplicity of forces that serve to create us. It is this shaping that we need to examine. How is our meaning and humanity shaped from pre-human forces?
Deleuze believed that "thinking out to be creative and affirmative" (p. xliii) and should be about creating new concpets and problems, not providing answers. It's not about disclosing some hidden meaning about art or literature but responding actively and creatively through allowing something to affect our established ways of perception.
Life is a plane of a series of signs which create lines of difference; and difference is life.
"Instead of finding a meaning behind events and texts, we need to ask hwo texts that appear as meaningful are created" (p. xliii).
A diagram of panoptic surveillance | Elmer
Notes from:
Elmer, G. (2003). A diagram of panoptic surveillance. New media and society, 5(2), 231-247. Retrieved June 7, 2008, from SAGE Publications database.
Not proof-read, read generously.
The development of a theory of panoptic surveillance is often hampered by an overly literal interpretation of the panopticon.
Criticisms of panopticism are made in three broad categories:
- The shifting of architectures of surveillance from "carceral enclosure" to databases which plays to debates about invasions of personal privacy.
- Questioning of the "automatic disciplinary effect of panopticism" and argues that people voluntarily participate in their own surveillance through exchanging private information about themselves for reward. These critiques miss the automatic nature of information collection on the web and the inability for opt-out.
- Through new media technologies the panopticon is now a synopticon where the many watch the few. This critique relies on an understanding that panoptic power comes from corporeal observation whereas it is derived from the architecture of light which is suggestive of surveillance
Elmer sets out to explicate the diagrammatic aspects of panoptic surveillance and to explain the continuous way consumers and their data selves are integrated into the collection of personal information processes.
The panopticon relies on the hegemony of light and vision as central to the development of Foucault's thesis of self-discipline and governance. The all seeing gaze is both marked and masked, visible yet invisible, by the architecture and arrangement of light. Thus, those subject to this unseen gaze assume its presence and modify their behaviour.
The panopticon is a "system of light and language" (p. 234) where the collection of information is foundational and essential to the operation of a system of classification and individuation. Deleuze in Postsripts points to this matter.
Foucault's theories of surveillance maintain a lingering reliance on a spatial dimension but it is equally important to note the data gathering aspects of the system which, in effect, begin before a person's incarceration within the confines of the panopticon. The customers were already classified and separated before their violent enclosure. Foucault was concerned with a generalisable system of power rather than the development of a specific architecture; but how might his system be imagined in the face of highly mobile modern subjects.
Elmer notes Foucault's development of theories of power through reference to the confessional which exposed inner-most secret self and which went unquestioned as a means for the assertion of power.
Criticisms of panopticism critique the technology rather than the technique (p. 235).
Roger Clarke (Information technolgy and dataveillance, 1998) proposes that surveillance is enabled and augmented by technologies but he does not address the specific moments of data gathering. At the data gathering moment the process of collection of information and surveillance is automated in a way reminiscent of the panopticon.
Elmer notes the work of Tim Mathiesen who proposes the idea of the synopticon which inverts or locates a parallel panopticon enabling the many to watch the few via the agency of mass media; and discipline arises in this process from a disciplining of our consciousness through the media message. Elmer develops an argument that TiVo can be understood synoptically noting the way the system learns, recommends and customises (other systems such as Kwikflix perform similarly). These recommendations, based as they are on aggregates of anonymous viewing patters, raise questions about how they may may be imagined within panopticism. Elmer argues for a redrawing of the panoptic diagram.
Such a rethinking was specifically considered by Deleuze in Postscript on societies of control in which he noted that we had already ceased to be members of societies of discipline and had now become modulated by and within societies of control. Signatures and numbers which marked individuality and place within a mass had given away to a code which denies or permitted access to information and locations.
Deleuze's diagram describes a digitally languaged system of ever changing shape and size which described the decentralised movement and flow of information throughout a network.
Elmer mentions "simulation" a great deal in relation to technologies but I'm unsure if he means that technologies tend to simulate the corporeal flow. If anyone can help me understand this I'd appreciate the help.
Deleuze and Guattari introduce the possibility of mapping the continuity between light and language. Again, I'm not sure what this means. Help anyone?
In another work, Deleuze proffers the concept of the rhizome as a diagram which evokes a sense of the space between architectural drawing and built form.
One of the key claims of panopticism is its ability to function with little or no supervision as a mechanism for automatic and constant observation and data collection. (p. 243)
In the panoptic diagram consumers are both rewarded and punished for their behaviour. Rewarded with an all-too-familiar set of images and content that leads to the consumption of more of the same and punished with extra work when attempting to seek out the unfamiliar (p. 245).
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
Post-panopticism
I wrote a very brief post about post-panopticism recently but there's substantial development of the concept on Beyond Modernity which is well worth a read. These critiques appear not to throw panopticism out but propose a development of the concept that variously recognise the effects of new technology and a more fuzzy/messy understanding of the workings of power and surveillance.
I'm keen to work up a critique of panopticism using Deleuze's Rhizome.
Stay tuned.
A plague on the panopticon | Green
Further to my earlier, and very brief post about Green's A plague on the panopticon I'll add a few more detailed notes here.
Green argues that Foucault's concept of Panopticism is a defective metaphor that promotes misunderstandings about the way surveillance works in the real world. Green attests: "Despite Foucault's claims to the contrary, surveillance is ultimately conceived as the handmaiden of dominant power" (p. 27). He argues that the panopticon as a metaphor does not sufficiently address the complexities of power and misses an opportunity to recognise the benefits (lowering crime, provision of customised products and services) that flow from surveillance.
Green proposes the rethinking of Foucault's observations of the management of plagues and believes that a new and more fruitful way of understanding the workings - and the benefits - of surveillance is possible as a result. He opines that Foucault's concept of Panopticism invokes a form of totalising power from which it is impossible to escape. For Green, a failing by Foucault of not delimiting who is in power and who has power creates a paradigm that is difficult to sustain. He wants to see - and here he relies on Gramsci - a restoration of human agency and an essential freedom of the individual from power.
He dismisses observations of the applicability of Panopticism as being overly dismissive of the downgrading of "liberty, 'personhood' and resistance" (p. 30) and points to a "legion" (p. 31) of problems with the concept. Citing both Giddens and Lyon he critiques panopticism as tending to the technological determinist and claims that the individuation central to the panopticon, far from destroying individuality, provides a way for the individual to break free from the "mass of autonomy" (p. 31).
Suggesting plague response as a relevant way to conceive of surveillance, Green notes the utility of the categorisation of healthy and sick people during a plague event, and points to the integration of surveillance within the fabric of community. He points to the messiness of the plague form of surveillance - people were able to hide in dark corners - and this enables a degree of access to individual resistance that he believes Foucault did not permit within the panopticon. Such a messy understanding of the effects of surveillance is far more contemporary he suggests in that it provides for a clearer understanding of the uneven manner of the deployment of surveillance.
He points to the inversion of surveillance through technologies such as digital cameras and video recorders that captured the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989 and astutely observes the way resistance movements such as the Chiapas, Zapatista Army, and other change advocates use technology to maintain surveillance over authority. Green believes such an inversion of surveillance was not contemplated in Foucault's panopticon.
Green, S. (1999). A plague on the panopticon: surveillance and power in the global information economy. Information, Communication & Society, 2(1), 26-44. Retrieved June 7, 2008, from Informaworld database.
Thesis question revisted - again
My previous post outlined a new provisional thesis question.
A friend suggested a variation with the aim of being more "...explicit about which Foucauldian theories/modes of analysis you will be using."
Here's the suggestion (with thanks to S.):
"What do the application of Foucault's Panopticist theory reveal about the employment tensions found in and around dooce and QueenofSky?"I'll be covering some of Foucault's other theories so here's my edit:
What do Foucault's theories on power and subjectivity reveal about the employment tensions found in and around dooce and QueenofSky?I think I'm onto something.
Again, thanks S.
Thesis question revisted
Will I ever tire of re-working my thesis statement? I already am, but I'm going to continue.
This is what I outlined in my honours presentation:
- Examine the tensions arising from the publication of personal blogs by employees
- Employing a Foucauldian analysis
- Of contestation located around two prominent personal bloggers
What would a Foucauldian analysis of the contestation found on and around dooce and QueenofSky reveal about the tensions arising from the publication of personal blogs by employees?
It seems clunky. How about:
What do Foucault's theories say about the contestation found on and around dooce and QueenofSky?
I dropped the last part because that's really something that may come out of the analysis rather than what I'm doing.
And then:
What do Michel Foucault's theories indicate about the employment tensions found on and around dooce and QueenofSky?
This last one is more concise. I like.
Best I run off and get some feedback from super coach M.
Monday, 9 June 2008
Databases as discourse | Mark Poster
The following are my notes from reading:
Poster, M. (1995). Databases as discourse, or electronic interpellations. In The second media age (pp. 78-94). Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Descartes famously states: "I think therefore I am". By these few words he articulates a dividual, a binary human-thinking divided within. I am nothing - I don't exist - without my thoughts. My thoughts precede my being. There are thoughts and there is an Other. The two is established; in Descartes and later by Kant in the Enlightenment. The human subject is born. Now that I am separated from my thoughts, I am also born into a world of objects separate from the I.
The subject is interpellated or "hailed" thus reconstituting themselves as a subject. The teacher, when calling on a student to answer a classroom question, presupposes the student as an "autonomous rational agent" and the student, in answering the question, must "stand into" this position firstly to answer the question and secondly in declaration of their being a student. "Linguistic interpellation" operates through the subject complying with the configuration of their subjectivity without question and reflection (p. 80). Such a configuration can be at the level of race, sexuality, class, age, gender and presupposes the individual as a subject. The process of interpellation is conducted at the level of language.
The interpellation of the subject is always incomplete. One interpellation does not deny the existence of another. For example, I could be interpellated (invited to act) as a student, a husband, a male, as straight; each of which I am free to reject but each of which appear in their formation as a certain conclusion, as if already answered by me, the subject, in the affirmative. In each instance of interpellation the subject is fixed and frozen into the state of subjectivity, an end, a conclusion; the finished product so to speak. How quickly we lose our childhood.
It is important to understand the post-structuralist relationship of language to the development of the subject which helps to us understand the nature of databases as discourse. Foucault employed the term discourse to counter those who claimed writing as being a reflection of a human subject; we can't hear or read words and deduce from those words a consciousness. Rather discourse is an exterior totality in which a subject is dispersed and formed. Discourse is not the manifestation of the unfolding of a thinking subject but rather it is a totality of the discontinuous planes through which the subject is variously enunciated. In other words the subject is created through discourse rather than the creator of discourse. (The blogger as subject is often created through legal and capitalist discourses). Discourse and power become imbricated upon one another.
Our culture creates, through discourse, a subject as a rational, autonomous individual. Foucault managed to point to the problematic of the assumption of a preexistent rationality; rationality is historically constructed. According to Foucault there never was a founding, universal, or sovereign subject but rather the subject is produced through "practices of subjection, or in a more autonomous way, through practices of liberation..." (p. 83). Discourse then has a power effect on "...the subject even in movements of "liberation"" (p. 84).
The power effect of discourse is to bring the subject into a position in relation to the structure of power so as to then apply and exert influence; and this is done in a way that disguises the constitution of the subject as a subject until after the subject becomes such.
The panopticon "...is not simply the guard in the tower but the entire discourse/practice that bears down on the prisoner, one that constitutes him or her as a criminal" (p. 85). The panopticon subjectifies and normalises.
A database is a discourse because it constitutes subjects. Poster proposes that databases produce subjects who are to a lesser or greater extent willing participants in their own surveillance. The combination of infrastructure and commerce combine to produce a far lighter and easier maintained panopticon - the super-panopticon - which is a never ceasing machinery of surveillance. The super-panopticon works beyond the reach of individual agency and makes a mockery of concepts of rational autonomy and social action. The super-panopticon interpellates the subject through the discourse of databases. The database produces subjects that are multiple and decentred and in contradistinction to the hegemonic concept of the subject as a rational, autonomous, centred agent.
Databases are the perfect "grids of specification" in that they divide and contrast, group and classify; and they constitute objects of which they speak. (Worth noting here that most blogging software is database driven; and the possible relationship to RSS feeds, feed readers and archives).
Unlike the panopticon where the subjects became interiorised, conscious and aware of their own self-determination through an awareness of the presence of surveillance, subjects produced through databases are dispersed and diverse and often unknown to their embodied counterpart. How can we resist the development of these subjects? Our bodies no longer provide a refuge against the incursion of the discourse of the database.
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Surveillance of blogs isn't always high tech
Surveillance of blogs may not always be the result of high-tech capabilities. Blogs can come to the attention of management through the personal association of colleagues with the blogger. Once the blog is thus brought to the attention of management then a variety of methods might be used to keep watch on the blog.
Importantly blogs can come under retrospective surveillance. Internet archives often reveal the complete contents of a blog despite attempts by the author to delete the blog. As an example a quick Google search can locate the archive of the Washingtonienne; a blog that resulted in the dismissal of its author despite it being deleted prior to the dismissal.
Panoptic surveillance in potentia
The panopticon automatically collects information about subjects. It is its reason for existence; to observe and collect information. Light, gaze, collection of individualising and normalising information.
The surveillance of a specific blog is not automatic. An institution must make some form of assumption about sovereignty over that which is potentially contained within any and all blogs. This assumption leads to a surveillance of everything on the Internet in the hope of detecting the presence of words that match keywords or watchwords, for example the names of their products or that of their key executives. Delanda calls this observation of all the Panspectron. On the appearance of a keyword or watchword match, then, and only then, is the subject of specific surveillance formed. Until such time as a subject is formed panoptic surveillance does not exist but rather it exists in potentia.
Saturday, 7 June 2008
A plague on the panopticon | Green
Green provides a refreshing view of the democratisation of surveillance technologies showing that, since Foucault's Panopticism, surveillance has become a two way effect of power that runs in and on multiple dimensions through society. On an initial reading the article is both a useful critique and a worthwhile advance on the "docile bodies" envisioned by Foucault (although it's worth bearing in mind that Foucault effectively developed his own critique in this regard).
Green, S. (1999). A plague on the panopticon: Surveillance and power in the global information economy. Information, Communication & Society, 2(1), 26-44. Retrieved June 9, 2008, from Informaworld database.
Post-panopticism | Boyne
Boyne provides a significant critique to Foucault's Panopticism but concludes that the model requires some adjustment rather than being discarded. Worth a more thorough read.
Boyne, R. (2000). Post-Panopticism. Economy & Society, 29(2), 285-307. Retrieved June 9, 2008, from EBSCO Host database.
Panopticism in business
Article posits that panopticism is used in business via meetings and management by objectives which keep employees under constant surveillance. It sounds more like Postscripts than Panoptics too me.
Akella, D. (2008). A Question of Power: How does Management Retain It? Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, 28(3), 45-56. Retrieved June 8, 2008, from Ebsco Host database.
Friday, 6 June 2008
What I learned from my honours presentation
I conducted my honours presentation today to a group of fellow students, three examiners, and my supervisor. Here's what I learned.
- There's a bunch of very smart people doing honours. The intelligence and insight of my fellow students borders on intimidating. Beware world when this group starts work.
- Focus is everything. The tighter the focus - to the point of being insanely narrow - the more useful and meaningful will the thesis become.
- Explain why you're choosing what your choosing. I'm analysing the contestation found on and around two private blog sites. I didn't explain why I chose these sites and guess what?: that's the question I was asked. What lead me to chose these blog sites? Where are they located? Why chose US blogs? My style at times borders on arrogance by choosing a field of analysis and not respecting the reader enough to help them undertake the same journey of discovery I've undertaken by justifying my choices.
- Put the exact question of the research project front and centre; and be honest about it. I've been saying that I'm researching the tensions around personal blogs; but that's only part of the story. What I'm really doing is analysing the tensions found on, and around dooce and QueenOfSky, through the critical application of the theories of Michel Foucault.
- Criticism is useful for the development of a coherent argument. Sure it's nice to hear platitudes and nice things being said about us, but there's a lot that can be learned from constructive criticism.