This is research brief that we have created to detail the focus of our current Design Ethnography project. We are looking at the world that surrounds blogs, how people create, consume, interact with and share using ethnographic methods.

1. BLOGOGRAPHY Blog watching with a purpose By: Alicia Dudek & Kate Saunderson

2. We are looking into how people use, abuse, and reuse new media through consumption and production of content. BLOGOSPHERE

3. Mapping the idea space and focusing the scope

4. Understanding the blogosphere’s role in relationships

5. People Three Main zones of exploration Blogosphere / Internet Technology

7. What are you DOING? People Who are the people in the seats? Online – reading blogs – writing blogs – commenting – replying - participating Involvement in the blogosphere Who, what, when, where With who – the groups, the organization of groups, the organization, hierarchies How much time is dedicated to this form of new media entertainment?

9. What are you DOING? Blogosphere A form of new media An umbrella term for online log writing, journal writing, criticism, reviewing, chronicling, the commentary mechanism, social system, subculture, and the literacy of the participants The collective works of the bloggers and commentators The physicality of blogs as well as the ethos or ether of the blogosphere Meta-blogging ; blogging about blogging; “I blog therefore I am”

11. What are you DOING? Technology The stuff you use to make it happen (meaning the blogosphere) The behavior of people with regards to technology How people use, abuse, and reuse technology meaning new media? Tailoring technologies How often and how long are the interactions with technology?

12. WHY are you doing it?

13. WHY are you doing it?

14. WHY are you doing it?

15. THE INTERNET BARRIER WHY are you doing it?

16. WHY are you doing it? THE INTERNET BARRIER IS SOMETHING FLUID THAT EBBS AND FLOWS CREATED BY USERS BLOGGER AS THEY ARE ONLINE VERSUS BLOGGER AS PEOPLE IN THE REAL WORLD

17. What PEOPLE and why? People Reading People Writing Reading blog posts Commenting on blog posts Replying to comments, etc. Attending events planned online through blogs, or implementing the advice or knowledge from the blogs. Returning to regular blogs. Blogs they you look at to be entertained, just for fun? Blogs that merge fun and function? How do you find other blogs? Google, search Blog subscription, RSS feeds, links Reading blogs on blog agglomerator sites Through websites Writing blog posts Commenting on blog posts Replying to comments, etc. Blogging replies to other online content Reacting and responding to real world or virtual world events, you tube videos, retweeting, etc. Linking of blogs and whys and hows, etiquette/ literacy Networking Organizing events THE INTERNET BARRIER

18. OK… but I still don’t get it

19. Can you explain more about what “internet (didactic) barrier” means? Screenshot: Metal Gear Solid Exactly the question we would have asked ourselves. We have been thinking about this a lot and its a difficult thing to pinpoint because this barrier is very fluid and takes many forms. I can answer this question best with a story about the video game Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear Solid was released on the Playstation 2 console back in the day. It was one of the culminating games of its time and came to represent what a high quality game should look like, but it also contained elements that broke the rules of video games. In one of the later stages of the game the main character, a gunslinger named Snake, is battling one of the final bosses. Psycho Mantis, the boss, has telepathic and telekinetic powers. Throughout the fight, Psycho Mantis begins to ask the player if they enjoyed playing other video games and making comments on how often they saved or how other games were played. By reading the memory cards contents and breaking the 4th wall Psycho Mantis, is illustrating how a video game can breakout of the game atmosphere and truly unsettle the user. This is further deepened when during the battle Psycho Mantis disables the users controller leaving them helpless. In order to defeat Psycho Mantis the player must move the controller from port 1 to port 2 in order to regain control. By demanding this physical action in order to interact and reading the memory card with the players personal information, Metal Gear Solid was revolutionary. Here is a video of the part of the game we are discussing Metal Gear Solid Psycho Mantis Boss Fight.

20. The internet barrier What does this mean? The internet barrier mentioned in our video can be viewed as an interaction barrier. It is constantly changing due to technology and the actions of users. It is like the surface of a giant bubble in a state of fluxus.The player of Metal Gear Solid is like our blogosphere participant. The game console is our technology. Psycho Mantis is a representation of the blogosphere. The blogger puts themselves out there by creating representations of themselves online. By creating these representations and interacting in the community the blogger is "filling up the memory card" which can then be read and utilized by the blogosphere community in order to interact directly with the blogger. The commentary and reply mechanism which is fundamental to blogosphere literacy acts as a way of breaking the 4th wall between bloggers and the online world. That's what it means at the moment in our context.

21. Sidenote: HOW TO BEAT THE METAL GEAR SOLID BOSS PSYCHO MANTIS Crossover Connection Artifact BLOGPOST FROM: WWW.VIDEOGAMEY.COM

22. What other relationships are you going to explore? As the story about Metal Gear Solid illustrates its really creepy when the 4th wall is not only broken but a person's private, public, personal, professional, virtual, and physical world's begin to collide. Blogger's are actively seeking this collision and forming it in their own hands by shaping their interactions with this fluctuating barrier. This is what we really want to explore. How the people shaping the barriers are changing the way that the blogosphere reads people and how interactions are created.

23. What is the relationship between blogs and technology? We see that there is a relationship between the availability of technology, the form of blogs, the ways that they are used to interact and get updated. This relationship has an effect on how people connect, learn, and share information. If people have more access than others there will be differences in how people get "caught up" in the virtual world or construct their virtual world. The barriers that each user puts in place, shielding parts of private life from the online world and vice versa, are crucial in understanding the entertainment landscape. Technology and its availability is fundamental to any shifts in online behavior. It can either enable or prohibit certain actions, even going so far as to create entirely new patterns of behavior. Looking at how those patterns are formed and influenced, during the development of the blogosphere, cannot have been mutually exclusive to the development of technology. Our research would venture into the relationship between original blogs, their traditional format of long written posts, to that of the new forms of blogs, their predecessors, such as twitter, vlogging, Flickr, photo blogs – the morphing of this area alongside new mobile technology, increased internet access, digital literacy/attention span.

24. did that help clarify?

25. What QUESTIONSand WHY? How do we break through the wall of questions?

26. What QUESTIONSand why? Things we can learn by blogsurfing Define community in blogosphere: blogging community mapping, Twitter feed study Identify groups + communities of blogs: observe and record. Examples: 'Fail blog'/ 'Itmademyday'/ 'Post Secret ' Document behavior of commenting: Observe blog’s and zoom in on comment behavior and literacy What tech made it happen: Trackback what technology was used How do people design the frames (camera angle): What tools do they use? Framing bloggers: Digital observation/ select questionnaires Frequency of blog posts: Observe blog replies and comment Blog success – public blogs, popular blogs How people began: look at early blog posts, interviews

27. What QUESTIONSand WHY? Our questions focus on uncovering the nature of this relationship. Users interact and interpret along this line. We are zeroing in on what, when, where, who, and why.

28. What QUESTIONS andWHY? Questions we want to answer Where people blog: physically and virtually Blog history Validity of blog output Blog stats active/passive – No. of dead blogs Blogosphere demographics People motivations in digital spaces Scale of blog writer: create scale/find scale Scale of tech literacy: create scale/find scale Stakeholders Sites frequently used

29. What QUESTIONSand why? Questions to ask people Q. Did any technology help or hinder your move to blogging? Q. Where do you blog? Physically & Virtually Q. How you got into blogging? Q. Why do you blog now? Q. Time spent on blogs? Q. Do you see yourself as a blogger? Q. How people began their blogs? Q. How do you find blogs?

30. But…how are you going to ask questions?

31. What METHODS and why? Digital and real ethnography methods will be mixed in order to see the whole picture. This illustrates the spectrum of real or virtual involvement during the course of the method. INNOVATIONS: Catch a “viral” blog wave or comment wave and ride it Blog tour – a blogger takes you along on a physical or virtual tour of their blog Focus group on blog avatar creation Using whiteboard blocks in order to have people role play through the creation of a blog community Individual identity avatar creation, post it note tags on 3 dimensional shapes in order to provide a physical anchor i.e. action figure

32. What METHODSand why?

33. What METHODS and WHEN?

34. What OUTPUTand why? Make your last output match your next input Design of a focus group on blogs: Blog avatar creation role-playing Quantitative Statistics Counting of the instances that certain similar events occurred Supplemented by desk research into overall blogosphere population and statistics Stories Specific illustrative examples of stories Persona creation – a form of storytelling Reflection on the methods and processes used Documentation of all methods and processes used FINAL DELIVERABLE In a format that easily and clearly communicates the findings Form, kind, analysis, visualization, presentation

35. What OUTPUTand WHY? Must be satisfy demands: INTEGRITY INTERESTINGNESS FORM FUNCTION

36. Questions & Comments? Please email us: Alicia Dudek alicia.dudek@gmail.com Kate Saunderson klsaunderson@gmail.com

37. Image Sources http://www.bubbleinc.co.uk/pages/images/thought_bubble.jpg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayZG-RJCUYs&feature=related www.informationisbeautiful.net