The social studies of online blogs (not including vlogs yet) always intrigue me to see how the society at large transformation dealing with information and details.
http://www.salon.com/books/excerpt/2009/07/06/scott_rosenberg
I am not much aware of any kind of formal study of deaf blogs and vlogs affecting the deaf community.
I met numerous deaf people whose greatly dismiss the deaf blogs and vlogs as some kind of nuisance or unwelcome stuff.
I also noticed pretty changes within deaf people's societal attitudes toward me. Handful of particular deaf individuals pretty avoid me which they fear of my possibility of posting personal information, etc. Others embrace me very well or treat me normally. Ever some deaf people send me or talk to me with very damaging information about any particular deaf people. I really have to be careful what I am supposed to do like writing the blog piece to inform the Deaf America and the rest of Deaf World. I refuse to allow anyone to use me to destroy someone deaf for personal reasons. That would be not the proper journalism ethics.
I never will post any personal information whenever any deaf people share their private conversation. All of us are human beings with our own flaws. That is against my own nature anyway. I am a Sagittarius myself which I tend to be more loyal and understanding. I do condemn any kind of deaf cronyism, favoritism and corruption.
I often walk on very thin line whether I should write and post any blog piece to right the injustices toward deaf people as Ricky Taylor aka Ridor have been very famous for.
The Salon article mentioned that the society at large consider too many blogs out there. Do you agree with this societal assumption?
ASLize yours,
Robert L. Mason
Monday, July 6, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Only point 2% of all blogs contain anything worth reading or keeping. 4 billion are said to exist, most we don't know about, it is not possible to read them all or even a significant part of them, let alone find the relevant ones.
ReplyDeleteAs a form of self expression they are perhaps valid. The old adage anything you can write there are thousands who can write better is probably true as well. I think blogging pointless if you are trying to compete.
The thing I find with deaf blogs is only the deaf read them ! in awareness and campaigning terms this is no use to deaf people, since it is mainstream and hearing we need to inter-act with, so deaf blogs can be self defeating.
It is the old deaf 'way' of coming together and operating amongst their own that defeats awareness, defeats campaign effectiveness indeed continues to isolate the deaf, sadly there is a significant core of deaf people that prefer that..
We are talking to ourselves mainly. You know what psychiatrists say about people who do that :)
The old deaf way will soon be under the surge.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with something MM said: "The thing I find with deaf blogs is only the deaf read them ! in awareness and campaigning terms this is no use to deaf people, since it is mainstream and hearing we need to inter-act with, so deaf blogs can be self defeating." The reason I disagree is because I have had NUMEROUS hearing people read my blog, and they continue coming back, and they have talked to me after reading them, or emailed me with questions, etc.
ReplyDeleteIT is not completely pointless as a means of campaigning or interacting with the mainstream/hearing environment, it is more pointed towards whether or not your posts or topics are a relevant issue. Blogging about a deaf owned photography studio (for example), is probably not interesting generally speaking, to the hearing section, but blogging about internet captioning, movie captioning, the ADA, IDEA, and so on are issues that could potentially affect them as well, so they have a vested interest oftentimes in discussing those topics.
Also, I DO agree SOMEWHAT that there are those of the "old" deaf way that are self-defeating when attempting to remain cloistered, but again, it depends on the issue. People of many different cultural distinctions have been banding together for thousands of years now in efforts to better themselves, their lives, their working conditions, and so on. So it can be an effective tool of self survival so to speak in certain situations.
Eddie Runyon (ThumpaFlash)
If anyone in the UK can name just ONE issue where deaf blogs have made any sort of mileage in the deaf advances and campaigns in mainstream it would be a start, but has anyone an example ?
ReplyDeleteOnline deaf-wise in the UK there is no apparent lobby as a group of any sort, facebook is trivia and 'social', Twitter (Less said the better really !), has also failed to be a force deaf have used either, deaf groups online have by and large closed out all forums, so no access to them much.
Attempts to use the online petitions angle has failed miserably, because the UK 'access' to government online demands a numerical statistic the deaf cannot hope to get, given they rejected 2 MILLION signatures on a car issue, deaf are not even in the running.
While it is reputed 9 million in the UK exist with hearing loss and deafness, nobody has seen any sort of street image since 2001. Our blogging such as it is, is about our own issues and with each other, had they been highlighted in the mainstream area we could be talking a force for advance, but they aren't. Deaf blogs for deaf people.
Cultural issues are non-productive campaign-wise, since whenever they emerge they conflict with non-'Deaf' viewpoints and deteriorate into serious difference. Until deaf and HI act as a single entity no advances are going to take place. CI's genetics have all fragmented any sort of unified approach too.
Someone starts one campaign, immediately a few others of other deaf areas say where's my inclusion ? back we go ! I think campaigns online are the domain of individuals mostly, the group ethos is dead, except for 'show', ask any deaf group how many members they have.
The problem is blogs offer the individual a voice of sorts, and groups by definition do not encourage individuals much (That's why I left them). Groups represented unity in the past too, and that's gone.