My Pageflakes Tour

Textual Liaisons' Pageflakes

..So, aggregation of RSS feeds that pertain to both "social media" AND "gender construction"? --not easy. It felt as though the majority of sites I came across were, either, blogs dedicated to the "business" aspect of social networks or blogs dedicated to the "personal/reflective" aspect of social networks. I did not want a pageflakes composed of just online dating sites, or just social media marketing analysis, or just user statistics of either, or (perhaps worst of all) just a bunch of live journal-esque feeds about sex and old boyfriends (of which there many). I have found that, in order to strike the most dynamic perspective on this research, my 'Pageflakes' tool should include a little bit of everything--I believe it's important to sandwich the meat of my study with an "industry" side and a "community" side...two widely distanced poles of internet experience that bookend what one perceives to be a "normal" flow of engendered information.

Textually.org is weblog that looks at mobile content from around the world while taking into consideration its social/cultural/and economic implications. Textually.org is unique in that it's not just an index of software breakthroughs. The site (started by a young woman from Switzerland) reports usage and innovation while still managing to interject--albeit briefly--some sociological musings on the nature of the market and its participants.

Social Media Today, while on the heavy (and broad) business end of my research, posts important conversations being had about the industry by the industry. The very people in charge of development are, themselves, an online user audience in need of pleasing. Many of these social media "experts" wish to distinguish themselves from media "marketers", marketers being those who are mostly concerned with what online brand will lure which online consumers. A social media expert, it seems, wants to make the best 'communication channel' and NOT the best 'advertisement'...interesting how integrity is achieved and redefined between the online "inventors" and the online "campaigners".

The Dating Insider and The Dating Weblog are two different approaches to similar material. The Dating Insider is Dave Evans' blog about the industry of online dating, whereas The Dating Weblog is an experiential report of online dating--includes much more cultural and psychological commentary.

Blogging in College: The Gender and Popular Culture Project is, in fact, a university class structured very similarly to that of WRIT 340! Except, of course, ALL the blogs are focused on gender construction. The students' writing spans the breadth of all new media, not just mobile and cyber technologies. I think it's important to look at youth culture's take on youth culture.

Science Daily is an incredible news source for international gender-happenings and gender-based scientific research. While many of the articles focus on health and medicine, there is an entire section dedicated to brain and behavioral differences in men and women...some of these studies include differences in gender behavior online!

Listed under my search tools are the Universal News Search and the Universal Blog Search. I restricted my keyword to "gender" in the News Search because I found that it yielded a more dynamic and often more pertinent result than "gender AND technology" or "gender AND media". For the Universal Blog Search I included "social media" because I want to read more about people's personal experience with the internet as an interactive construction of "self".

The Pixsy Video Flake is a video search engine that I've designated solely to an "online dating" keyphrase. I want to know how 'video blogs' have impacted the expectations and behavior of men and women who play the online field. Who is getting the most "face" time...and for what audience...what are the messages being sent about gender roles, safety, and attraction?

I have also included a link to my favorite articles on gender and media via the diigo bookmarking flake and, below it, a link to similar articles tagged by a fellow social bookmarker I found through DEL.ICI.OUS.