global voices, one world

Some of you may know that I am doing ethnographic research for Global Voices, which includes becoming a participant myself. I finally cleared all hurdles to do so, including defending my proposal and getting approval from IRB (and this experience is probably enough fodder for another blog post).

Monumental: I just finished drafting my first post for Global Voices. Okay, so it is not exactly my first official blog post, since my contribution is part of a larger blog post that is a round-up of the issues discussed in the year 2008 in the Chinese blogosphere, with me being responsible for summarizing the part about the poisonous milk scandal. Nevertheless, if I did nothing majorly stupid, my first words will soon appear on the Global Voices website. Exciting!

Some thoughts on this first experience: it takes quite some time to write a thorough and comprehensive blog post. While I was just summarizing existing blog posts, it still took me a few hours to read them, to get the gist of them and string up a narrative that connects them all in a compelling manner (well I can hope it is somewhat compelling). A more regular post will most likely take more time since I did not have to do much original research because this was a round-up post.

I am also starting to learn how to get my ‘voice’ right for Global Voices (no pun intended). That is to say, how do I write in such a way that my post fits the ‘house style’, e.g. does not stray too much off the kind of style that is established there, while maintaining my own personal edge to it. Every publication has its own style – I write quite different on my personal blog, or on my professional blog here, or when I write for a journal targeted at a general audience, or compared to a paper I write that I submit to an academic journal. There is a style guide, but I expect I will learn how to write in the Global Voices ‘voice’ mostly through interaction with the editor and by reading how my colleagues/friends write for Global Voices.