youth and blogging

I talked to Elin Stueland from Barnevakten yesterday. Barnevakten works with increasing the knowledge about children and media, especially among parents. They've recieved several questions from (worried) parents about children and blogging. Which is why I was contacted for an interview. First of all, I don't have the impression children blog a lot. I've hardly seen any bloggers younger than 14-15. At least I could say a few things about youth and blogging based on the things my informants have told me. The black/white summary of the interview: what's good and what's bad about adolescents writing about their lives and thoughts in more or less public spaces? I struggled somewhat when we came to the bad things about blogging. Is it not a problem that some of my informants might be a little too open when they write about their lives and their feelings? Especially if they don't bother to restrict diary-access to registered friends only? What's too open? I'm not too personal myself. I deleted a whole paragraph from the tarnation-entry, because I thought it was too disclosing.

A minority of my informants have told their parents about their online diary. Some of them don't mind revealing stuff publicly, but they still don't want their parents to know. I found it rather challenging to take a parents' perspective. I'm usually focused on seeing things through the eyes of my informants.

tarnation

I saw Tarnation last week. It may be the best documentary I've ever seen. Though it's packed with emotions. Beautifully made, the video-clips, the photos, the music, the story: Jonathan Caouette's self-portrait of his upbringing and his life. Caouette reconstructs his version of his and his family history through the use of home movie footage. Which clearly makes this an interesting case, and makes me crave for more: there must be footage for a few potential "real-life" documentaries around. The exposed (and constructed) life of real people. How alluring.

blogging, eyewitness accounts and journalism

Yesterday a journalist from NRK called me and asked for an interview about blogging, London bombs and journalism. She promised to come before noon but never showed up and never informed me why. Which I think is pretty lousy as I spent half an hour preparing. The journalist seemed to be especially interested in whether blogging has become a problem for the established media. I don't consider it to be a problem that people can write about and share their own experiences. The whole blogging phenomenon fits well within a post-traditional discourse emphasising the increased role of the individual, authenticity and personalisation of news. Private, amateur bloggers can be what mass media institutions cannot. Private individuals do not have to follow journalistic ideals, presenting a balanced and 'objective' view of opinions. However, the ideals and ethics of journalism stay the same. What I find most interesting is the use of amateur photos within mass media. BBC urge people to send in their eyewitness experiences, photos and videos. Using amateur photage and written accounts require them to evaluate these expressions according to journalistic norms. Not according to the same qualitative standards, but they are responsible for the content. The attraction of amateur photage is amazing. Cameraphone-videos of lousy technical quality make it to the headlines. You can't really see much, but at least it's taken where and when it happens. Apparently so authentic and real.

Flickr's The London Bomb Blasts 7/7 pool contains quite a few eyewitness photos. But a large part of the photos are of TV-screens. Documenting the news-coverage?

feeling good

It's summer, but I'm not having any time off yet. I'm trying to get on with the "Becoming more like friends"-article. I love working when most people are having summer-vacations. It's oh so quiet, less traffic, hardly any e-mails. And the very best thing: cycling straight to the beach after work. I uploaded this photo to flickr 27th of August last year. When summer was pretty much over. Now I can still look forward to several weeks of sun (hopefully). Maybe time could just stop for a little while (contradiction in terms really)?