Graduation Year
2004
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Granting Department
Anthropology
Major Professor
S. Elizabeth Bird, Ph.D
Committee Member
Kevin Yelvington, Ph.D
Committee Member
Susan Greenbaum, Ph.D
Committee Member
Mark Neumann, Ph.D
Committee Member
Randy Miller, Ph.D
Keywords
blog, mass media, journalism, virtual community, mediascape
Abstract
Weblogging is an Internet social practice that became known as a technology. This project investigated weblogging (blogging) as an example of a media technology that arose under particular historical circumstances. To investigate this, blogs were examined in detail, participant-observation was used to construct and run a blog, and practicing bloggers were interviewed. The study found that blogging, like all technology, originates within existing social practice (context); has a diffusion process that causes it to spread between people (Geek-Chic); and leads to certain social outcomes (Personal Community). This is seen as a general pattern for the lifecycle of technology, serving to argue the case that shifts in social practice lead to technology, not the other way around.
Scholar Commons Citation
Milne, James M., "Weblogs and the Technology Lifecycle: Context, Geek-Chic and Personal Community" (2004). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1160
