As a nascent blogger, whose professional interest is in privacy, you can kinda see where my excitement was aroused by this whole brouhaha. I was first very intrigued (forgive me!) about what was actually said about the bloggers in the thesis and what impact the commentary and publicity would have on the studied bloggers. Big questions in the privacy world centre on what the expectations are in this new age of user generated content – what is the new reasonable person test going to be in terms of what is private, public, etc for web-published material? From the sounds of the discussion, I think you all managed pretty well, and, with a little help from friends, have (more or less) come to terms with what clearly initially felt like a violation of your rights.

But then, as someone who is just plain intrigued by blogging and the phenomenon it is, I became very interested in the purported thesis of the paper. (So in my excitement about this topic, please forgive me if I continue to reiterate what many have already said!) I say purported, because, as has been pointed out, it wasn’t borne out particularly well. I would have loved to see her draw some viable conclusions from what she did read. Her proposed thesis about whether Mommyblogs are dialogic spaces was well started but petered right out. (Of course, you don’t need 100 pages to answer it; we can all do it in one word – YES). A better question might have been what kind of dialogic space is this, how is it different/ the same from the way the term has been used in theoretic works before… etc. (Academics – would I have got a better mark if I could have followed through with that approach?)

I’m imagining the author became sidetracked and bemused by the content she found, and, unable to tidily wrap it up, included way too much summary of the material and conjecture about the writers. Very unfortunate.

I have some real sympathy for the writer, who has wandered into a huge body of work. I really wanted to think about how she could have made any kind of intelligent comment whatsoever. Unfortunate as many of her judgments about the writers were, they were all doomed to suffer from the simple fact that she didn’t read the whole work. Can you imagine doing a literary criticism on selected chapters of a very long book? That doesn’t seem right to me! To make meaningful criticism about (for instance) how division of labour is not included, she really needed to read every post – because how can her sampling process create a decent view of the blogs? If she were to read every word, how could she possibly create any kind of summary of the narrative in the work, or draw sufficiently few central themes to make a readable argument?

But I digress. I really wanted to share a story. I’ll save that for my blog, not as a teaser, but because I’ve used enough space here!

Oh, and Dani, at least 2 of the commenters have used the thesis author’s last name in their comments. From the discussion, there seemed to be a pretty strong desire not to identify the author here, but I don’t know if you wanted to leave it up to individual commenters, ensure that didn’t happen in your space, or mention it to them… or whatever.

First, in their opinion, that her not contacting you was completely appropriate, because to do so in the beginning could slant her analysis. As in, any of you could go back and change posts, alter things etc. And they also felt it was appropriate to cull the blogs, because it would be like looking through a newspaper – because they were published publicly.

However, IF she were to publish the work in a journal or any publication and she was quoting you AND your work was copyrighted (which I see in at least Dani’s case it is), THEN she should contact you at that point for permission. Before that, nope.

As for the part where you felt she was making gross assumptions, they didn’t want to weigh in without reading it themselves, but they felt it sounded like she was doing qualitative not quantitative analysis. When we do this, we have a software program that goes through and matches occurrences of phrases and words and subject matter and helps the researcher put together strings of ideas, and she may have used that. Or she may have not. It sounded like you felt like her assumptions were way off base, so I have no idea.

Anyway, some more 2 cents.

After enjoying a leisurely lunchtime reading through your post and the comments and links and working my way through the thesis, I’ve only come up with this:

The problem, as I see it, is not in any ethical misconduct, invasion of privacy, ignorance of blogging, narrow vision, poor use of grammar or in anything other than that she’s made many value judgments and has leapt to occasionally wrong conclusions and didn’t stick strictly to critical analysis. For just one example, see p. 104/105:

“Here we see a shift in Cook’s perspective; however, it seems unfortunate that when she realizes that she cannot do it all (something some of the other mommybloggers never bought into; see for example, Dani’s blog), she thinks about dropping one of the things that is most important to her (her writing), instead of dropping something less important (breadmaking) or asking her husband to help out more.”

And I’d like to get all up in arms too, as a mother and feminist and as someone who blogged and has defended blogging as a folk art and who loves to write. And, as someone who’s never had secondary education I’d think that someone bucking for a degree suggesting however obliquely that a subject ask her husband to help out more within the course a thesis is totally out of place. I just think, well, simply – it sucks. But it’s not our job to correct her thesis, and that sucks too. We’re intelligent people and know she should have done better. We’re mothers, for the most part, and feminists and nice people and bloggers and want other women to do their best and succeed – and she somehow failed us all with this, and some specifically.

But then too, I also think – what does this do, in the end, other than generate lots of discussion that ultimately goes nowhere much and changes very little? The thesis has been around for some time now, and never impacted you until you read it. You can’t un-read it, and un-feel your agitation, I get that; and now that you’re aware of these slight injustices I can imagine that you’re forecasting a time when someone might call up your permanent record and this will be on it right next to the time you put bubble gum under the seat in fourth grade – but so far, it’s only ego.

The author of the thesis clearly stated too “… I did not read the blogs extensively prior to selecting them.” So, I’d be curious to see if she’s still reading. THAT, I think, would be the most interesting outcome, and would actually have some value – the opportunity for a proper defense to comments made; and perhaps an education on the politics, mores and other conventions of blogging for herself in the process of that. And while she doesn’t have to care about the subjects for the purposes of her thesis, you don’t easily get to say things like “So give up breadmaking or ask your husband to help.” and not get called on it somehow, sometime, in this world. And for those who think of blogging as a conversation amongst friends, your child’s diarrhea is never TMI.

As you’ve said twice – it’s fodder. But my dictionary says of fodder:

fod·der (fdr)
n.
1. Feed for livestock, especially coarsely chopped hay or straw.
2. Raw material, as for artistic creation.
3. A consumable, often inferior item or resource that is in demand and usually abundant supply

After almost two hours of trying to sift through the bullshit to see what the bull ate, I haven’t found anything of substance. She had a thesis that wasn’t brilliant enough to prevent criticism. It isn’t artistic enough to be truly controversial, it’s just annoying. And her thesis and what it generated is perfect for those of us who consume blogs; and comments (like mine) are in abundant supply.

So yes it’s fodder, but it’s not food for thought. Those who were mentioned within it and who are reading all this now aren’t livestock – they are smart, interesting women and at some point we all need to stop feeding frenzies like this and I, for one, won’t get these two hours back and have the same kind of hangovery feeling that I get on December 26, January 2, February 15 and other random dates when it all seemed like a great idea at the time but I should have left the party while I was still having fun.

That, and I personally believe Mommyblogging is a proper noun, and it and its derivations and ought to have been capitalized throughout.

I’m still on the fence as to whether any ethical breaches have been made, in no small part because mine is a lowly undergraduate degree so I’ve been relying on my friends in higher ed for context. However, and getting back to my realm of expertise, I think this is another great example of the fact that the pace of social media adoption has far outstripped our ability to quantify and qualify our “rules” around it. Wonder how this would have played out if someone did the same sort of content analysis on someone’s FB status updates?

One other point I meant to mention in my original post is that I love the irony of the fact that she stated one of her thesis points was to discern who the “real” mommybloggers are — and in fact this whole conversation proves that the blogs themselves are a woefully inadequate tool for answering that particular question.

Ya got to give her credit, though — any topic that inspires in excess of 100 comments and tweets across a handful of blogs is definitely worth discussing!

There are also odd random thoughts that pop up: she’d like people to discuss “why the mother always takes the full parental leave”. If she’s really interested in that question, I bet Stats Can has actual statistics (and it’s not mothers 100%, fathers 0%). Certainly mothers take the parental leave more often in part because employers are better about allowing it, in part for cultural reasons and in part because of the breastfeeding thing at the beginning.

Finally: “Why do mommybloggers blog?” Apparently to “subvert dominant ideologies concerning motherhood”. Oookay then. Here I thought I was doing it primarily because my family and friends refuse to all live in the same city and it’s a more modern version of the newsletters we used to pass around when I was a kid and living overseas (away from most of my family).

In the end, I think it would be good to let SFU’s research ethics people know that if you are going to write about the lives of bloggers, to do analysis without letting them know, they’re going to potentially get upset.

I think if I was a member of an ethics commitee, I’d like to know that. Something to consider for the future.

PS – I really do disagree with the characterization of the discussion on twitter (esp. #creepythesis) as bullying. It was an emotional but also tongue-in-cheek and fun discussion. I guess people find it hard to see the humour in our writing, huh?

Now, perhaps Dani, you “main narrative” back in 2007? (I haven’t gone back through your archives) – maybe potty training did factor in heavily to your online “character”. Is there anything wrong with that? No. However, you narrative, (like many others) changes as your kids grow up, you return to work, and make other life choices. So, I feel like she’s drawn conclusions based on an unfinished work. Of course, here I am judging her based on only reading snippets of her work!

Now, isn’t that really what blogs are all about? We all draw our own conclusions about an author based on one post, one week etc. and what keeps us all coming back is to keep getting more clues as to who the “real” blogger is. I do think she missed some key elements of how people “read” blogs.

And I admit, I only read her analysis of your blog and I do feel that it came off rather “I’m in my ivory tower and you are ‘in the home’ working on #1 and #2″. When in reality, what is so unfeminist-y about teaching someone a life skill to empower them towards greater independence. Being a mom is about empowering a new little person and that narrative shouldn’t be so rudely dismissed.

Just sayin’

Now I blog. It does take time…but then the kids might be in bed, or they could be at a friend’s house. I don’t watch TV.

Are our blogs about us, all the time? No. Many bloggers use our writing to bring attention to important issues (like Nestle!), raise awareness (March of Dimes, Friends of Maddie, Redneck Mommy on adoption and disabled kids, Her Bad Mother re: her nephew Tanner, YOU re: infertility, ME re: dyspraxia, and so many more!), support each other (Anissa Mayhew, Stephanie Neilson, Heather and Mike Spohr). It’s unfair to lump bloggers into a box and assume we’re neglecting our kids to get attention and monetary gain online. Maybe some do, but I don’t know any.

Blogging is about community. Our blogs are our creative space. We talk about ourselves and our families like we would over coffee; revealing some, but never all. Some is ramped up for entertainment sake, some is never said.

I ALWAYS have my 14 yo’s and my husband’s permission. If I didn’t blog, I’d write the old fashioned way, and I’m sure you would too. Don’t let someone who doesn’t understand the art (yes, it’s an ART) take that away from you, Dani. Molly just doesn’t get it; and I kinda feel sorry for her.

(captcha: the sunbeam) *grin*