Nov 12: Reading Reaction

In the reading entitled, “Shout into the wind, and it shouts back,” the author, Lori Kendal, speaks about her research with the “journal”-style blogs like LiveJournal. According to Kendal LiveJournal is a online diary rather than a blog that dominantly houses teenagers. Even though those involved in her study were well into their 20s and 30s. In essence LiveJournal is a place where individuals display what is going on in their mind publicly.

One of Kendal’s more interesting topics about LiveJournal is subtitled, efficiency vs. audience management. The individuals that were interviewed almost unanimously stated that they preferred using LiveJournal to contact their friends than using e-mail or telephone. In a sense one could state that LiveJournal was becoming center in their communication circles. According to Kendal, “It decreases the emphasis on LiveJournal as a diary site. By thus depicting their participation as business like.” Here we have individuals not knowing where to draw the line in the sand between personal and public. Granted some individuals enjoy talking about anything and everything, but when you are treating a diary site as a business experience, you might need to take a step back from it all.

Something that Kendal and I both agree upon is that having your contacts from every aspect of your life clumped into one place can create problems. Some individuals should find some truth in the old saying, “do not dip your pen in company ink.” Stating that life at work and life at home should be separate, but with LiveJournal that does not seem to be possible. Most of the participants soon discovered that audience management and control your diary’s privacy was soon quite important. They all came to the realization that keeping their work and personal lives separate was important. It comes down to humans being humans and whether or not they will use their brains to filter out the information that can be seen as harmful to them.

Reading:
Kendall, Lori. (2007). “Shout into the wind, and it shouts back.” Identity and interactional tensions on LiveJournal. First Monday, 12. Retrived on August 21, 2008 from http;//www.firstmonday.org/issues.issue12_9/kendall/index.html