Work blogging research article finally out!

This is to announce that I've managed to get a second research article published based on my ongoing research into work blogging.

Details of previous output can be viewed here and version of this paper can be viewed in the right-hand tool bar.

The second piece of work is entitled Creating, Connecting and Correcting: Motivations and Meanings of Work-Blogging Amongst Public Service Workers? and written with the help of a friend and colleague of mine - Vaughan Ellis.

This piece of work is now a chapter in book entitled Work Matters by Sharon Bolton and Maeve Houlihan and published by Palgrave Macmillan (ISBN: 9780230576391) - more details here.

Due to copyright restrictions I cannot offer a copy via my blog, but this statement by the books editors should give you an idea if you wish to purchase a copy:

With technology as a continuing theme, our final chapter explores the emerging phenomenon of work blogging, what it means and what it does.

The interactive capacity of the internet has created a stunningly accessible medium for individuals to directly voice their realities, not least in relation to their work.

Vaughan Ellis and James Richards offer a compelling snapshot of just how dynamically this medium is used to make hidden worlds of work publicly visible and understood, in their exploration of the motivations and practices of work bloggers within the UK public sector.

Through their eyes, we learn the ways in which many workers are choosing to voice their experiences of work: at times to create, at times to connect, and indeed, at times to correct.

Vaughan and James, through indepth (and online) dialogue with nine active bloggers, get under the skin of this activity and push past easy assumptions about blogs as ‘mere’ forums for venting, complaining, exposing or resisting corporate ideology, under the canvas of anonymity.

The authors build a nuanced understanding of its uses, behind which, we get a telling glimpse of the degree to which, echoing one theme of this volume, work matters in peoples’ lives.

From a research methods perspective, Vaughan and James also usefully examine the opportunities and issues relating to work blogging as a means of accessing direct workplace accounts, and discuss online methods of research more generally.

In doing so, they signpost emergent dimensions of research practice as yet not well appreciated, and assuredly set to expand.