Cyberunions and research

Can trade unions prosper in Cyber-space?

I think the answer to this question is still unclear, but the following web-site should help people make up their mind.

See Cyberunions by Walton Pantland.

Blog survey findings

Videojug has just released some statistics on blogging.

Some details:

The results of the recent blogging survey are now in.

The responses from participants who own and run blogs produced some very interesting results across the 30 questions, which we’ve provided here as reference.

The blogosphere has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years, so it was interesting to learn more about why so many bloggers have decided to become active in the blogging world.

The overwhelming majority of new bloggers (nearly three quarters) choose to run their blogs for personal and non-commercial reasons.

Instead, the desire to help others by passing on their knowledge of their chosen expertise or skills seems to provide the main incentive for starting their blogs, as well as to write about particular hobbies that they are interested or active in.

Some very interesting and insightful results.

The full set of results can be viewed here.

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.

Help required for undergraduate dissertation project on blogging

If you are a blogger yourself, and you could could spare a few moments for the greater good of bloggers, then have a go at helping an undergraduate student at Napier University with her dissertation.

The dissertation is on the subject of gender differences in UK online blogging.

Follow this link to help out.