Long Time..No See

I've been so caught up with uni work and regular work I haven't had a chance to post on here. After having a nice week of doing nothing and relaxing I am now back to the grindstone of spending every day in the library and spending my night times thinking about how much work I have to do. My feelings towards doing my uni work is to treat it like a bog standard 9 - 5 job. So I go in every day apart from the days I'm actually at work and spend my whole day there. I came out today and my eyes went funny from seeing daylight, being holed up infront of a computer all day cannot be doing them any good.


Even though it may not look like it (seeing as I haven't done any recent posts about my research on here) I am actually doing work for my dissertation. It's involved lots and lots of reading of very long journals and articles and less looking at lots of lovely blogs. But I am finally getting somewhere and have started to focus in on the areas I want to look at and am in the process of coming up with my chapter plan (which has to be handed in next week). As blogging is such a broad area I found it hard at first to narrow it down and decide which direction to go in.
I have now (almost) decided on my 3 chapter areas, I'm thinking of looking at the business of blogging and how bloggers are making money from their blogs and how endorsements and the sending of products from companies can be affecting the way a blog is written. Another chapter is the blogging vs print idea and how blogging is becoming a new form of fashion journalism and whether magazines can keep up with the ever changing technology and the speed that bloggers report on the latest fashions and trends, this will also involve me looking at how blogs and magazines have now started to work together and run alongside each other.
My third option I am a bit unsure of as my original thought was to look at the growth and rise of blogs, however I am worried this is to broad and I might not be able to focus and be analytical enough on it. So my other thought was to look at the 'panoptic gaze' and how bloggers can influence and control how the viewers style themselves and what they buy.

"The panopticon gaze is the idea of a silent, unknown overseer in the society such as the government that subconsciously controlled all aspects of life. It symbolizes extreme transparency within the society where the rulers or leaders can look down and know, being able to see exactly what is going on, influencing the actions of every individual" (Wikipedia, 2010)

I think that by doing more research into the latter It could potentially be a good chapter to include.

As well as lots of reading I have also written a questionnaire which I am in the process of emailing to various bloggers in the hope that they will reply. So far I have emailed Fashiontoast, LibertyLondonGirl, Sincerely Jules and India Rose. I am aware it's a long shot that they will even reply or read it but its worth a try. I still need to do more however by this point I'd been in the library all day and was starting to go a bit wappy!

I think I should probably end this post now as it'll end up being longer than my dissertation!

Abi

xx