WEEK ONE: Adrian Miles ‘Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning’

(24/07/2018)

Previous to being apart of the Networked Media class, my opinion of blogging was pretty limited. If I’m being completely honest, I thought the term ‘blogging’ was very old school and that they were exclusively owned by suburban housewives or free-spirited ‘yogis’ who have quit their 9-5 jobs to travel around the world to discover the true meaning of life (think Eat, Pray, Love). I never considered blogging to be something that was still relevant in this day and age, so it baffled me that RMIT offered an elective that exclusively explores the process of authoring, publishing and distributing a blog.

As a third year Public Relations student, I believed that this particular elective could have cultivated my writing skills, in which I could apply to the countless of press releases and pitches I will be writing when I enter the working world.

The similarities between Instagram and blogging was consistently being raised in class and at first thought, I was kinda like…

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How could such a modern-day social media platform have anything to do with an old-school concept like blogging? The reading assigned to week one coerced me to view blogging under a different light and how it’s a term that can be used to describe what happens when we post on Instagram.

Blogs in Media Education: A beginning’ by Adrian Miles describes blogs to be a “web-based publication” that allows a record of an individual’s “ideas, reflections and activities”. Miles also describes blogs to be a “public document, and it is written with the assumption that it has readers.” (Miles, 2006)

This could easily be used to describe the mechanics and functions of Instagram and how it’s used by its consumers. I utilise my Instagram feed to reflect who I am as a person and showcase the places I’ve seen and the experiences I’ve gotten the chance to encounter. I am aware that with every picture I post, an audience will be able to view it, which definitely dictates what I choose to publicly display and omit. It isn’t a private forum for my eyes only; much like this blog. Even as I’m typing this, I’m very much aware and conscious of what I’m saying, as I know it’ll be viewed by strangers whom I’ve never met before.

To wrap things up, I’m definitely interested in diving deeper into the course, as we explore the mechanics of blogging as a modern-day teaching tool.

References

  • Miles, A. (2006). Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning.