Unidade 4
a)

Definition
References : Pierre MORELLI, “Blogs et médias, quels rapports aujourd’hui : essai de typologie », EUTIC 2007 international conference, Athens (please find the complete paper in a separate file)

As Pierre MORELLI mentions it, blogs are “media technologies which articulate functions of information (writing of texts, storing information) and communication (deposits of comments, direct links towards other blogs - blogroll -), which automate the contents’ implementation (syndication) and introduce a reciprocity into the direction of information flow (push + pull)”. Thus blogs affect in a notable way the relationship between emission and reception, they take part in the form’s transformation of the public, from a formless mass to a whole of individuals. On the one hand, authors of blogs, on the other hand, readers, Net surfers, bloggers or “simple readers”, sometimes brought to engage the dialog through deposits of comments.
Pierre MORELLI considers that blogs question how media actually work : emergence of individual media of masses ? Improvement of existing media mechanisms ? Birth of new communication diagrams ? The public of blogs takes share in the construction of information. It is not any more the abstract figure of ideal receiver but the real individual in the singularity of its tastes and acts, therefore of its participation and/or its media contribution. Reception and emission modes are also upset since any receiver becomes a potential transmitter.
Always according to the same author, the relation to information meets other fundamental modifications : individualization of reception, automation of procedures by data processing. “To the logic of flow in traditional media succeeds a logic of action based on initiative framed by the modular choice available, a reticular offer which articulates contributions of several types and origins in a complex, syncretic and sometimes reciprocal way. The receiver takes an active share in selection and organization of information. Better still, user is now able to act directly on it, under the seal of comments or by taking part in the drafting of contents put on line.”
Joël DE ROSNAY (please see links after this text) joined the analysis of Pierre MORELLI and proposes new definitions corresponding to the current stakes of the numerical media :
- “infocapitalists” = holders of creation, production and diffusion means for informational contents under copyrights, generally under digital form. They force users and purchasers to use vectors of diffusion or distribution they control (big television channels, editors, music majors… = mass media).
- “pronetarian” or “pronetariat” (of the Greek pro = “in front of, before, favorable to”, and of English Net = “network”) = new class of users of numerical networks able to produce, diffuse, sell digital non owners contents, being based on “new economy” principles to create important flows of visitors on websites, to allow free accesses, to make pay very personalized services at low prices, to exploit effects of amplification on the web… They are more and more in competition with traditional “infocapitalists”, to which they do not make any more confidence, to get information, to listen to music, to see videos, to read books or to communicate by telephone.
- “media of masses” = new large and distributed modes, coming from “pronetarian” expression. They use digital techniques of collaborative creation, connection and exchange which gradually supplant some of traditional vectors of mass media.

Typologies
References :
Dominique CARDON, Hélène DELAUNAY-TETEREL, « La production de soi comme technique relationnelle. Un essai de typologie des blogs par leurs publics », 2006, Réseaux, n° 138, LavoisierLaurence ALLARD, « Termitières numériques ou les blogs comme technologie agrégative du soi », 2005, Multitudes, n°21, Les Belles Lettres (published on line in 2006)Rebecca BLOOD, The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, 2002, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA, USA.Rebecca BLOOD, « Weblogs and Journalism in the Age of Participatory Media », 2003, Norman Reports, vol. 57, n° 3,
We mention below typologies of blogs identified by Pierre MORELLI in his paper (read its complete text for more details).
According to Rebecca BLOOD (2002), 3 macro-categories would be enough to include the main trends in blogs:
- personal newspapers, which publish personal feelings,
- notebooks, whose contents are more sophisticated (like on line essays, syntheses…)
- filters = interfaces which have a purely utility relation with information (editorial monitoring, events annoucements,…).
Always according to BLOOD (2003), she identifies 4 types of blogs which would make journalism :
- blogs held by journalists,
- blogs proposed by professionals about professional issues,
- blogs written by individuals who are witnesses of significant events,
- those which offer direct links to news.
According to the Italian blogger Giorgio Nova, we can classify blogs according to the dominant activity of their author on the Web:
- “hunters” (or explorers, gatherers) = expert in art to find information, to flush out innovations of any kind (quotations, hyperlinks). They are reactive and publish in a very regular way. Principal interest = to offer to Net surfers personal paths through the informational “magma” of the Web, like a press review.
- “weavers” (or farmers) = proposes longer and less frequent articles. Their first concern is to formalize meaningful contents starting from collected information, which they take time to give in form, to articulate, to confront with various points of view found on the web.
- “chamanes” = great capacity of extrapolation, they can build a page from very few data. They are narrators, poets of the Web who apprehend the writing, not like an expression form but like an object in itself. For them, the Web is a wonderful window display, a exposure place of testimonys, to make their “poietic” skills more visible.
According to Laurence ALLARD (2006), blogs are more than setting on line diaries. They bring to think “a new articulation between spaces, methods and conceptualizations of relation between oneself and oneself in writing process”. For individual that they are, contributions fall under a “polyphonic dynamics” and form a “large autobiographical intertext”.
Dominique CARDON and Hélène DELAUNAY-TETEREL (2006) distinguish four trends in blogs :
- intimist blogs = exhibition of his interiority which engages the author in a process of recognition based on anonymous and interpersonal relationships, controlled by the author in a certain way, i.e. with a certain distance (comments only addressed to the author, no dialogs between readers),
- familiar blogs = more opened to dialog with readers, they describe environment and/or daily activities of the author (relational network is primarily made by close relations),
- community blogs = crystallizes contents and exchanges around some aspects of author’s profile (its skills, abilities…). They build a community identity starting from confrontation of experiments, shared practices (exhibition of personal collections, sharing of collected contents, subjective exchanges about common cultural practices…),
- citizen blogs = the statement is completely detached from the author’s personality. Blogs of distanciation, of open discussion and criticism, privileging a citizen approach of subjects, they prohibit any community affiliation by principle.
Lastly, Pierre MORELLI proposes his own “visual typology” for blogs :

Here are the explanation he gives of the various tops in the previous figure :
(1) very personal and very committed newspaper (the blogger gives his opinion about all the news)
(2) co-construction of a general-interest, contributive and impersonal resources’ space,
(3) resources’ space relating to a very specific set of themes (only facts, without comment nor opinion),
(4) thematic, objective, contributive and impersonal resources’ space but co-edited by several authors,
(5) citizen forum of ideas’ exchange without specific set of themes,
(6) blog of a consultant, asserted expert in one specific field,
(7) participative democracy.
Complementary links to consult :
- table of contents of a special issue of Norman Reports review, with a chapter about “Weblogs and Journalism” (papers are downloable in Pdf files by clicking on their titles).
- http://www.technorati.com/ = a famous search engine for blogs, currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.
- definition of vlogs in Wikipedia, which are “video blogs”, taking advantage of web syndication to allow distribution of videos over the Internet (using R.S.S. or Atom syndication formats, for instance) and playback on mobile devices and personal computers (podcasting).
- Steve Garfield vlog (as an example)
Complementary texts to read :
To go further on this subject, you can read 2 famous books (one in French, another one in English) that are now available online :
- « La révolte du pronétariat », written by Joël DE ROSNAY in 2005 (Fayard) and entirely on line since June 2006, describes in details current social changes in the media with development of Internet for the masses.
- « We the Media », published by Dan GILLMOR in 2004 (O’Reilly) and now on line. « This book is about journalism’s transformation from a 20th century mass-media structure to something profoundly more grassroots and democratic. It’s a story, first, of evolutionary change (…). This is also a story of a modern revolution, however, because technology has given us a communications toolkit that allows anyone to become a journalist at little cost and, in theory, with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before. »
b)
References :
Gautier POUPEAU, “Blogs et wikis. Quand le web s’approprie la société de l’information », 2006, BBF, t. 51, no 3, Paris
Julien LEVREL, « Wikipédia, un dispositif médiatique de publics participants », 2006, Réseaux, n° 138, UMLV/Lavoisier
Brian LAMB, « Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not », 2004, EDUCAUSE Review, 5, vol. 39, pp. 36–48, University of British Columbia

Definition
According to Gautier POUPEAU, wiki is a Web site allowing all the visitors to modify the various pages of them at will. The word “wiki” comes from the hawaian term “wiki wiki”, which means fast or informal. Wikis make it possible gradually to build a structured content by additions, constituting units, and an organized one, which facilitates the exploitation of it while taking again the principles of communication and division’s model of forums. Each page of a wiki thus contains a hypertext link which goes to a page making it possible to edit contents and thus to carry out modifications immediately without validation a priori by some authority. Design and structuring of the Web page are done by an easily understandable syntax. This method allows to create external and internal links, which are in fact new pages coming to be added to the existing wiki structure. Structure of a wiki Web site is not fixed a priori; it evolves/moves progressively by addition of pages in the site. To set up a wiki, we found, in the same way that for blogs, platforms called “farms” and application softwares called “engines of wikis”. Among most used engines in France, Xwiki makes turn the Xwiki.com farm, or Mediawiki, developed within the framework of Wikipedia, which is also used by Wikicities farm.

Uses
Always according to POUPEAU, wikis are well appropriate for all projects in which groupware is important. The most widespread use of wikis is the installation of encyclopedias, like the most known wiki on the Web, Wikipedia, launched by Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia aims to create an universal encyclopedia in free access and supplied with visitors of the site. Wikis interest also more and more companies which use it within the framework of knowledge management. Lastly, more and more softwares, in particular under free license, propose wikis to write documentation in a collaborative way.
The community aspect is obviously even more present for the wikis. But, unlike blogs, a community is established around a wiki and not around all the wikis. The “Wikipedians” speak about “wikification” to indicate the act to add links refering to various documents of the same wiki. The community aspect also results in meetings of bloggers or “wikists” in the “true life”.
The case of Wikipedia was more particularly analyzed by Julien LEVREL to establish the main operational features. He founds ten statutes of different users, with specific functionalities and additional rights of writing in Wikipedia device. The three principal statutes are the following :
- the anonymous participant = is not registered in the project and has neither a pseudo nor a personal page. He can consult, create and publish articles and pages of discussion.
- the recorded participant = reaches, through pseudo and a personal page, a configurable space according to his practices. He can consult, create and publish, but also rename pages, download files and reach a list of follow-ups. He is invited to take part in decision makings while discussing and voting proposals he considers adequate, or while proposing new ones.
- the statute of administrator = “Wikipedian” named by the community to ensure maintenance of the encyclopedia. Administrators can protect and unlock pages in writing, consult and restore removed pages, purge files of pages containing copyright violations, block and free IP addresses and, finally, consult a special list indexing the articles which no participant has on his list of follow-up.
According to LEVREL, in spite of a similar name, the administrator within Wikipedia is closer to the figure of regulator, because he is not a special contributor. He is subjected to the same principles as the whole of participants. Although he has additional functionalities, he cannot, in theory, make decision without agreement of the community. This political operation basically modifies the assumed hierarchy of electronic forums, decisions in Wikipedia device being legitimated by the respect of deliberative procedures and not by the recognized merit of the participants. Thus, the accession to administrator’s statute is carried out on the basis of voluntariate of participant who declares his candidature (in 3 specimens on the wiki and 1 in the list of discussion). This candidature opens a special wiki page dedicated to the election of administrators, which remembers to each participant the procedure of election. Thus, participant willing to become administrator must prove he’s reliable with respect to the encyclopedic horizon and must be recognized by his voters.
LEVREL explains finally why the rationalized memory (by data-processing techniques) constitutes the masterpiece of inspecting and security device of editorial space, by producing a whole of objective evidence relating to the participants and their commitments :
- history of an article = makes it possible to see the article’s lifecycle, step by step, and also to facilitate management of vandalism while returning to a previous version when necessary.
- list of follow-up = allows a recorded participant to supervise the articles he wishes, mainly those in which it took part. With each connection, the list of follow-up automatically informs him about modifications made by other participants, proposing indicators on nature of these changes (which, when, where, comments associated…).
- “recent modifications” = centralize on an uninterrupted up-to-date page, on the same principle as history, modifications related to the whole of articles in editorial space.
- an automatically updated list indexing the whole of articles which are not reproduced on any list of follow-up of recorded participants (Unwatchlist). This list mentions particularly many outlined articles and is one of the “dark regions” of Wikipedia.

Pedagogical uses
Concerning teaching uses of wikis, Vivian SYNTETA (2002) from TECFA (university of Geneva, Switzerland) notes that “research has shown that teachers and students can get very creative and develop innovative and very useful activities for learning, inspired from constructivism and socio-constructivism like :
- Information sources (simple websites easily created)
- Student assignement hand-in (with the advantage of peer ratings)
- collaborative web-writing (to co-construct collective knowledge)
- problem solving
- project spaces
- anchored collaboration (anchored newsgroup-like discussions for reviews)
- focused discussions (forum-like discussions)
- case libraries (projects "Hall of Fame")
- cross class/courses projects (interdisciplinary projects)
- community building among students (common interests, adventure games…)
- learning to collaborate (to change the individualism culture of traditional instruction).”

According to Brian LAMB, pedagogical challenges in using Wikis are the following :
- “Tracking work created in wiki spaces can become a logistical nightmare, and course management can spin out of control quickly if pages are allowed to spawn without some set of protocols to regulate or index them. (…). Seemingly minor contributions to a collaborative document may have major effects, effects that may be near impossible to assess fairly or even to detect.”
- “As with the security issue, most of the pedagogic dilemmas presented by wikis can be addressed by "traditional" management approaches. (…) Instructors may choose to establish categories, topics, and other prompts to direct student participation into more orderly channels”.
- “Indeed, an instructor could structure and regulate interaction to such an extent that the wiki is effectively transformed into a stripped-down course management system. (…) This process involves not just adjusting the technical configuration and delivery; it involves challenging the social norms and practices of the course as well.”
- “This particular challenge bears resemblance to the one posed by constructivist teaching philosophy. To truly empower students within collaborative or co-constructed activities requires the teacher to relinquish some degree of control over those activities. The instructor’s role shifts to that of establishing contexts or setting up problems to engage students. In a wiki, the instructor may set the stage or initiate interactions, but the medium works most effectively when students can assert meaningful autonomy over the process.”

Complementary links to consult :
- “Wikis Described in Plain English” : another good definition and frequently asked questions about wikis, with a very simple video about it.
- Wikispaces : easy-to-use Wikis for non-expert people.
- « Tourbus » : offers guided tours of wiki sites all over the world.
- "Westwood" : a well-known example of pedagogical use of a Wiki in classrooms.
Complementary texts to read :
- “Teaching and learning online with wikis”, 2004, Naomi AUGAR, Ruth RAITMAN and Wanlei ZHOU (School of Information Technology, Deakin University, ASCILITE 2004 Proceedings) : this paper illustrates how e-learning practitioners can use wiki technology to enhance social interaction amongst students online, for the dissemination of information to the student body, for building information repositories or for the collaborative production of documents.
- “Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom”, 2006, S. PIXY FERRIS, Hilary WILDER (Innovate, 5, vol. 2, Fischler School of Education and Human Services, Nova Southeastern University - free online login is required to see the complete article -) : this paper considers the uses of wikis in classroom from the perspective of praxis. It places the uses and potentials of wikis along a continuum on which the traditional print-based educational paradigm anchors one end and the secondary-oral paradigm the other.