Monthly Archives: September 2014

In the article ‘Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog’, Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd explored the issues of online identities and fictionalization on the Internet. I began to wonder: do writers who write anonymously or under a pseudonym create a virtual identity, and does that affect how their audiences approach their work? Would their work be seen as untrustworthy?

Anonymity today is widely regarded as something suspicious and skeptical. In a fairly recent TED talk delivered by Brooke Magnanti, who wrote an blog anonymously for 6 years before she revealed her identity, talked about anonymous writers who needed anonymity and the reason behind it. One example that she used to illustrate her point is Jane Austen. Jane Austen published her book ‘Sense and Sensibility’ under the pseudonym ‘By a lady’, partly because of personal modesty, but also it was considered unladylike to write novels at her time. The book turned out to be a great success, and all 750 printed copies were sold out by July 1813. Many of her books are being translated in many languages and continuing to be adapted into TV shows and movies today. This shows that for many readers, content is more important than the identity of the writer. People at the time who read Jane Austen’s books didn’t just love them because they were written by Jane Austen.

Another successful anonymous blog is Waiter Rant, which is written by a Manhattan waiter. He shares anecdotes about his customers and conversations he had throughout the day in the restaurant where he works. He uses first personal narrative, includes his own observations and reflections in his writing (Morris), and offers insightful comments. Most readers are attracted to the content of his blog as well as his writing style, which is genuine, personal (as well as very witty), and that it further enhances his personality. Miller and Shepherd referred to The Weblog Review, which stated that most bloggers think that content is the most important feature of a blog as it ‘represents their freedom of selection and presentation’ (Miller and Shepherd). Most of the time, the value of anonymity for writer is enormous, but for the readers, it is less important to know who is writing. (Magnanti).

Work cited:

Miller, Carolyn, and Dawn Shephred. ” Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog.” Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Ed. Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana, Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff and Jessica Reyman. June 2004.Web. 21 Sept. 2014. <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogging_as_social_action_a_genre_analysis_of_the_weblog.html>.

“In Defence of Anonymity: Brooke Magnanti at TEDxEastEnd.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZnXPVyWP8w

 O’Connor, Kate. “The Anonymous Jane Austen.” Great Writers Inspire: Learning from the Past. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. <http://writersinspire.org/content/anonymous-jane-austen>.

 Morris, Sofia. “An Anonymous Blogger Tells All.” Home » Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. N.p., 2005. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. http://journalism.nyu.edu/publishing/archives/notablog/story/anonymous/

 Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.historytoday.com/sites/default/files/sense.jpg>

This week in ASTU class, we explored different types of genres, in particular, life narratives, as well as the importance of citation. In this blog post, I am going to link these two topics and talk about citation on social media platforms.

The most popular form of connecting with people nowadays is through the Internet. It is fast (most of the time), reliable and almost everyone has access to it. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr allow users to compose messages, and share them to both known and unknown people. These websites strongly encourage the share of information and interaction between users, by allowing them to express their opinions and views freely (Emilia Sukhova). However, some problems that arise from this medium are issues with citation and plagiarism. Most people often see citation as something you do for a research paper or in scholarly writing, but not something you would do when writing a 140 characters tweet (Rochelle Mazar). It is therefore very easy and tempting to take someone else’s content and post it as your own material to gain response and popularity from fellow users. A fairly recent twagiarism (twitter plagiarism) incident happened in 2011, and has led to discussions of the importance of citation in social media. You can read the full story here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/beauty-borrows-brains-as-indias-miss-universe-model-caught-in-twitter-row/story-e6frg6so-1226126307039?nk=0e5f1af0053f558cc5ec3cf6d318c228

The implementation of the retweet button on twitter has made it convenient for users to cite tweets, so that others can easily track back to the original tweeter and tweet. Similarly, Tumblr’s reblog function places the original source link automatically at the bottom of each post. Another interesting thing about Tumblr is that it also shows a history of the content, which includes comments and who reblogged it. As the original poster, you are being acknowledged for your work, as well as receiving feedback from others. (Rochelle Mazar). I found that these are more informal ways of citing sources and are very different from the citation format, such as APA and MLA that I learnt about this week. ‘Retweet’ and ‘reblog’ are perhaps some of the new forms of citation on social media sites that we can study about. Lastly, I would like to raise a question: how and what are some other ways we can reinforce to make sure citation are used on social media?

Work cited:

Sukhova, Emilia. ” Is Social Media Creating a Plagiarism Problem.”, convinceandconvert.com, n.d. Web. 11 September 2014. <http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/is-social-media-creating-a-plagiarism-problem-infographic/>

Mazar, Rochelle. “Episode 17 of Bibliotech: Citation and social media.”, AUCC, 8 May 2013. Web. 11 September 2014.<http://www.universityaffairs.ca/Article.aspx?id=109942&LangType=1033/ >

Elliott, Francis. “Beauty ‘borrows’ Brains as India’s Miss Universe Model Caught in Twitter Row.” Weblog post. The Australian. N.p., 31 Aug. 2011. Web. 12 Sept. 2014. <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/beauty-borrows-brains-as-indias-miss-universe-model-caught-in-twitter-row/story-e6frg6so-1226126307039?nk=0e5f1af0053f558cc5ec3cf6d318c228>.

Tweet-Tweet. Digital image. Telecome News. N.p., 1 June 2011. Web. 11 Sept. 2014. <https://telecomcanadaen.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/tweet-tweet2.png>

This blog is dedicated to my ASTU (Arts Studies in Writing) class in the Coordinated Arts program- Global Citizen stream at University of British Columbia, Vancouver.