Lilia Efimova

Individual in a public space: learning from weblogs and cities

Biography
Recently I introduce myself as “social scientist working with geeks” and formulate my longer-term goal as “helping people and their companies to turn work into enjoyable experience while achieving business goals”.

I’m Russian living in the Netherlands, have a degree in economics (mathematical modeling) and MSc in Educational and training systems design, as well as 10+ years of experience of facilitating learning and change (and designing for that). Currently I work as a researcher at Telematica Instituut: on my PhD (“Personal productivity in a knowledge-intensive environment: a weblog case”, http://iceberg.notlong.com) and in several knowledge management projects with companies.

I came to social computing via blogging. I study weblogs as a way to understand personal knowledge management and as a seed that can grow into ideas for new generations of tools to support knowledge work. I also write a weblog (blog.mathemagenic.com, proud to be a winner of 2004 Edublog awards as best research-based blog and still holding in Bloglines top 100) and pretty active in European grass-root blogging initiatives (e.g. by organizing series of BlogWalk workshops).

I don’t think I’m well established as a researcher (yet), but I’m active participant in online discourse on social software, have a number of publications on weblogs, and usually good at connecting different perspectives, asking questions and thinking of innovative solutions.

In case you want to know more: http://blog.mathemagenic.com

Position Paper
Although weblogs are perceived as low-threshold tools to publish on-line, empowering individual expression in public, there is growing evidence of social structures evolving around weblogs and their influence on norms and practices of blogging. This evidence ranges from voices of bloggers themselves speaking about the social effects of blogging, to studies on specific weblog communities with distinct cultures (e.g. knitting community described by Wei, 2004), to mathematical analysis of links between weblogs indicating that community formation in the blogosphere is not a random process, but an indication of shared interests binding bloggers together (Kumar, Novak, Raghaven, & Tomkins, 2003).

Social structures emerging around weblogs are interesting for a number of reasons. Weblogs provide spaces for both individual expression and control, and interactions within social ecosystem; hence providing insights of interplays between practices of networked individuals (Wellman, 2002) and social structures where those individuals belong. While some weblog communities mirror existing social structures, others emerge when strangers find each other and connect. Weblogs do not provide a shared space with central topic or activity to be attracted to, nor (often) pre-existing community, but do support emergent social connections.

The nature of those connections is especially interesting, since understanding them can help to design environments to support emergence of social structures without predefining their focus or membership. From this perspective blogging is similar to “life between buildings” in a real city that “an opportunity to be with others in a relaxed and undemanding way”. This quote comes from architect Jan Gehl (2001) who discusses how to design public spaces that welcome and support social life.

While reading Gehl’s work I couldn’t avoid associations between insights about “individual in a public space” and my own research on personal knowledge management and weblogs. I’d like to draw on parallels between real cities and the world of blogging and propose characteristics of a space that supports emergent social activities: comfortable and protected environment with conditions for longer-term activities meaningful for an individual, “soft-edges” allowing easy switch between inward and outward oriented activities, opportunities for low-intensity contact and lurking, and “shared space” in between, to move social activity when it grows.

These characteristics could be illustrated with examples from other social software applications (e.g. del.icio.us, Flickr) next to weblogs, so I guess they provide a good start for a discussion.

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