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How can we understand weblogs as a form of communication?
That will be the main question for my thesis-proposal. It's a very broad question and to me it's also a very challenging one. How am I going to get an answer to the question? Therefore I will discuss two major subjects. First of all I need to make clear what communication is or when we can speak of communication. I will take Habermas' theory of communicative action to explain that, since he is one of the few thinkers of our time who has written a theory about communication. His theory will be the conceptual framework of what communication is.
To fully understand communication through weblogging, one must look at the way it is mediated by technology. Using technology can have major impact on the way one communicates. Therefore the second subject is an investigation of the effects the technology of weblogs has on communicationprocesses. Questions within this subject are how we experience the world through weblogs, in what way do we experience the other through weblogs.
These two subjects combined will give an answer to the question in the title. It will be a purely theoretical analysis and therefore a great challenge for me, since my entire education has been about empirical investigation. No statistics involved this time. Hopefully my faculty will approve my proposal.
Looks fascinating! Have you thought about other hermeneutic theories? Habermas is one, but there are Ricouer, Apel, Heidegger, Gadamer and others.
You might want to have a look at http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/jcma/papers/1986-ai-memo-871/memo.html"
Anyway - good luck with it being accepted.
Thanks for the link, Piers. About other hermeneutic theories: yes, I have thought about it, but I can't use all of them and picking a theory is probably more a subjective choice than an objective one. I like Habermas because of his explicit theory of communication. Heidegger might come up in discussing the effects of technology, but you must not forget that I'm not a philosophy student. My researchskills in empirical communicationresearch are much more developed than my skills in philosophical investigations. That means that I must not aim too high, especially within the limited time of doing a masterthesis (officially I've got 5 months to start and finish my research). Thanks again for your reaction and I hope you will continue reading my weblog.
Posted by: Elmine at February 13, 2004 12:31 PMI hope you will do a great thesis. Your proposal topic seems very interesting to me. Being a PhD student in instructional technology, I am interested in use of blogs for instructional purposes. I think your reseach may widen our understanding of weblogs. Let's wait and see your findings. :-)
By the way, instead of quantitative statistics, did you think interviewing with several bloggers and readers to test your hyptheses regarding communications with weblogs (that you will reach after theoretical analysis)? Just a thought.
Wish you good luck with your proposal and resarch.
Posted by: bekir gur at February 16, 2004 12:57 AM
