This document contains lecture notes about blogging and digital identity from a communications course. It discusses how blogs tell stories in an episodic format and are well-suited for short, frequent updates. Blogs can be anonymous or personal. When it comes to digital identity, people have both a personal and social identity online. Authenticity is complex in online spaces where people's physical bodies and audiences are not present. Cues like names, images, and behavior are used to express identity online.

1. Week 3 Lecture Notes Com325
Blogging: chap 5 (pages 115- 129)
Personal Connections: part of chap 5, pages 118 – 124
Everybody Writes: Section 60 (pages 181-183)

2. Episodic
narrative
 Blogs tell stories in episodic form, People read because
they desire the end of the story.
 Episodic narrative is well suited for blog because
people skim read on the Internet.
 Most blogs are short enough to be read in minutes
 Blogs use images in addition to text
 Blogs are updated frequently
 Blogs end when the goal is achieved or the writer stops
writing
 Blogs can be anonymous or personal
 Regular readers come to know the characters and
places of the blogger

3. Howlong
shoulda blog
be?
 The length of other digital writing, from Everybody Writes
 blog post: ideal length is 1,500 words
 email subject line: 50 or fewer characters
 Website text line: 12 words.
 paragraph: 3 to 4 lines.
 YouTube video: between 3 and 3-and-1/2 minutes
 Podcast: 22 minutes
 Title tag: 55 characters
 Meta description: 155 characters
 Facebook post: 100 to 140 characters
 Tweet: between 120 and 130 characters (determined
prior to the lengthened tweet of 280 characters)
 Domain name: 8 characters

4. identity
 Issues that shake people in online environments center
on identity.
 Identities are social; Identities are personal
 Personal identity refers to the aspects of ourselves that
distinguish us from others, including values, traits,
tastes, and biographies.
 Social identity: aspects of ourselves that define us as a
group member

5. Embodiedor
mediated
communication
 Top types of communication:
 Embodied communication (face-to-face where
communicants are in the presence of one another
 Mediated communication: communicants are not in the
physical presences of one another
 Examples of mediated communication include social
network postings, Skype, telephone conversations,
audio meetings, web-conferencing, and so on
 In digital media, we are said to be disembodied
identities
 Most people, most of the time use new media to act in
ways consistent with their embodied selves.
 Early research on identity focused on identity
flexibility used in multiplayer games and MUDs.

6. Thereisno
“OneTrueSelf”
 People expect others to be deceptive online.
 Self-representation is only one source of info about a
person in an online environment. Assuming different
identities is similar to playing a variety of roles in life.
 Identity scholars such as Gorrman (1959) say the self
is not a single, unified entity, meaning there is no “one
True Self.”
 Self is flexible and multiple, shaped by context and
environment.

7. Inauthentic self
 Inauthentic: representing one’s self too differently
across contexts.
 A person’s body provides a context for the self.
 When there is no body attached to the behavior, the
authenticity of behavior becomes less clear.
 For example, do cyberaffairs constitute adultery?
 A 19th century court declared a marriage that took
place by telegraph to be real despite the lack of co-
presence.

8. Disembodied
audiences
 People get less information about their audiences
through mediated communication than in person.
 When people construct online messages, they rely on
an imagined audience.
 Online audiences cannot be fully known, leading to
concerns about privacy.
 Privacy: controlling access to and use of information,
and the integrity of the context in which the
information was shared.
 Privacy is not secrecy.

9. Whytheaudience
cannot beknown
 Digital information is stored and replicated
 Digital information can travel to an audience for whom
it was never intended.
 There are silent listeners: owners of Internet
platforms, companies, and advertisers who buy and sell
information about consumers

10. Publicness
 On the other side of secrecy is the use of digital
communication for publicness
 Communicating to unknown audiences is a way to
build a public identity or “brand.”
 Self-branding is seen by some as less authentic, but it
can also be an asset when a professional online
reputation is established and nurtured using multiple
communication points such as social networks such as
LinkedIn and blog networks.

11. IdentityCues
 The most important identity cue is one’s name. Others are
race, nationality and gender
 Language is the primary tool for revealing our self to
others.
 Images we associate with ourselves, including avatars
 People’s technological ability in cue manipulation is
important.
 Behavior online
 Linking to others A person’s taste selections are an
identify cue
 The information posted by other people (tag us, link to us)
 Our SNS friends affect our identity. The ability of
observers to interpret cues affects our identity. Deception
can center on presenting one’s ideal self rather than
creating a false self

12. References
 Baym, N. (2015). Personal connections in the digital
age (2nd ed). Malden, MA: Polity Press.
 Handley, A. (2014). Everybody writes: Your go-to guide
to creating ridiculously good content (2nd ed.). Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley.
 Rettberg. J.W., (2013). Blogging (2nd ed). Malden,
MA: Polity Press.