Labouring lifestyle:
assembling the lifestyle blog
Blog
affordances
Voicy
consumers
Calculative
agencies
Lifestyle
blog
Blogmeets
Economy of
qualities
Blog as a sociotechnical dialogical medium
(boyd 2006, Pfaffenberger 1992)
Affordances
“functional and relational aspects which frame, while not determining, the possibilities for agentic action in relation to an object” (Hutchby 2001: 444).
Blog affordances (selection)
Asynchronous communication
Personalisation
Interactivity
and
Modularity
Julian Hopkins
Monash University, Sunway campus
julian.hopkins@monash.edu
The 6th Asian Graduate Forum on Southeast Asian Studies
Singapore (11-15 JULY 2011)
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
“organized around two structuring mechanisms: the singularization of goods and the attachment of goods to (and detachment from) those who consume them” (Callon et al. 2002: 202).
By qualifying goods in particular ways,
they are entangled in particular assemblages
“television business […] is basically a ‘consumer delivery enterprise’ for advertisers.” (Ang 2000: 186)
Audience measurement
Bermejo (2007): mid-1990's, industry standards are negotiated for the internet
“brands held as corporate assets are also produced by consumers, through the everyday practices in which consumers use branded goods to create social relations and shared meanings and affect” (Foster 2007: 717).
BlogAdNet
Blog
Blog
Blog
Client
Client
Client
Blog
Blog
Blog
Blog
Blog
Blog
Advertorials
Blog genres: sociotechnical assemblages that “specify and generalize communication, ensuring coordination of specific practices involving many people, and contributing to the reproduction of social institutions and sectors in society”
(Lüders et al. 2010: 950).
The personal blog becomes more populated by posts about ‘lifestyle’ events, and less about the more intimate and prosaic daily events.
The lifestyle blog becomes a means for coordinating marketing and advertising practices, and reproduces ‘lifestyles’ based around consumption.
Personal blogging practices become recast as labour through the monetisation of blogging, and enrollment by BlogAdNet.
Monetisation is not the only influence.
