Browsing by Author "Gaden Jones, Georgia"

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    Pros and Cons: Negotiating Value in Blog Culture
    (2016) Gaden Jones, Georgia; Bakardjieva, Maria; Mitchell, David; Redden, Joanna; Jubas, Kaela; Rak, Julie
    An analysis of conversations with bloggers in both focus groups and interviews as well as a decade-long observation of blogging culture informs this exploration of the ways in which bloggers discursively construct value, and the contingencies of these constructions. The goal was to examine which characteristics and behaviors emerged as privileged and valued and those which were not, extrapolating these visions of value to broader social and cultural contexts where self-documentation and public presentations of self via social media are increasingly prevalent. The participants in this study took up multiple, complex and often intersecting discourses of value. Value operated in understandings of textual conventions and standards; of the norms and potential of blogging as a technology of the self (Foucault, 1988); as social and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) and subcultural capital (Thornton, 1997); in the ‘scene’ (Irwin, 1977) of blogging culture; and as economic value. In this context, tensions emerge where constructions of authenticity operate as both hallmarks of independence and strategies for monetization and professional progress; and the individual quest for meaning and self-care is situated in a cultural context where usefulness (to others) and validation (from others) often shape visions of value.