ZAHHHEEEENNNN!

I thought about my final project during this chapter about zines. I thought it would be neat to have various students create a zine about the clique that they belong to at school. Use the process of making zines to help me, the researcher, gather more information, about these various cliques. The only problem is getting them to do it. Some cliques would be difficult to get to participate. But if they did... oooh wee... the information they provide could be shared with other students to maybe help them see and understand their interests.

I got a blogger and I need to get ot out!.

"Human subjects research overseeing committees are only now beginning to come to grips with the thorny issue of whether blogs should be considered public "published" documents- and so exempt from ethical review-or "private spaces," and therefore subject to various protections(Bell, 2005)

I found this statement in Chapter 26 to stick out to me the most throughout the reading. I thought if we use the blog site as a method of collecting data, as well as presenting it, it could potentially pose problems for both the researcher and the participant. Thinking back to our visit with the IRB, I can see a huge need to make sure the participants are not identified. This could be very difficult if the participant needs to provide an email address in order to sign onto the blog. That email address needs to be kept very personal in case anyone was to try to follow or harass the participant due to what information they may have provided in the blog.

On a more positive note, I love the use of blogs as a meeting place for followers to share their thoughts, ideas, and stories about certain subjects. Take for example my other blog, "Memorial to Ellen', which was a blog I set up so people that knew my mother could share personal memories about her when she was alive. These stories can then be shared with other family and friends, as most importantly my nieces and nephews that were either to young or were not born to know anything about her. I found as I would read other peoples entries, that I was learning more about my mom then I have ever thought I would. My favorites were the stories my aunts or my moms sister would share. Some stories were funny, some sad, and some just made you really miss her. I found the blogging was a awesome method for all of those people that knew my mom to come together and share.