In the article “The creator of Godwin’s Law
on the inevitability of online Nazi analogies and the ‘right to be forgotten,’”
these lines leapt out at me:
“This is the first time in human history
where individuals, in this number, have had the agency to be heard around the
world on a really large scale…now, everyone is in the position of essentially being
a publisher, an autobiographer, a poet” (2).
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| Underwood Standard Typewriter. Margarita European Inn. Evanston, Illinois. Photographed by Stephen Milligan (July 13, 2014). |
I have to admit at the beginning of the
Social Role of the Mass Media course, I was less than thrilled when I read the requirement
that we would have to maintain a weekly blog.
I saw it as one more requirement.
And I’ve always been resistant to the idea of blogging.
Who would really care to sit down and read
my thoughts on any given topic at any given time? Who am I?
A little nobody from South Carolina who isn’t qualified to offer an
opinion on much of anything.
Full Disclosure: I did once win a judging
contest held by my cousin’s twin girls (then in elementary school) after their
parents and I judged some of their artwork.
Or an impromptu performance. Or something. I can’t really remember, but they judged me
the best judge of them…I know—I was
confused, too, but I did win. I even got
a handmade certificate for my excellent judging abilities.
Anyway…I have friends and colleagues who
blog. One keeps a poetry blog. One maintains a blog on her experiences as a
teacher. Another blogs about her
fledgling wine-making adventures. The
teacher blogger has suggested that I start a blog as well, but I’ve always
brushed her off.
Who has time for such pursuits? In particular, who has time for such pursuits
in the middle of the school year while taking a course and trying to keep up with the innumerable deadlines and demands of
the journalism program, along with those of “normal” teachers and trying to keep up with all of the
yard work and the housework, not the
least of which is vacuuming up after two Persian cats?
Unless it’s required.
So I grudgingly wrote the first blog and set
up the site, merely using the same hosting site the poetry blogger uses because
I had his site bookmarked on the computer.
I customized the blog site with a theme and my own photos…I would never
just use the defaults—how pedestrian!
Soon I began to look forward to the weekly
blog because it gave me a chance to be creative, not creative for school but
personally creative (or at least that’s the way I took the assignment). I had been putting so much time into school
and these classes and photography that I’d gotten away from writing for the past
few years. But now this blog gave me the
chance to do a little writing—and get a grade for it! The blog became a little treat amongst all of
the serious work of analyzing the social role of the mass media.
So now I have the agency to be heard around
the world…now, I am a publisher, an autobiographer, a poet.
I even have fantasies of maintaining this blog
after the course ends—of my own free will!
Reference
Scola, Nancy. "The creator of Godwin's Law on the inevitability of online Nazi analogies and the 'right to be forgotten.'" Washington Post. 11 Aug. 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/11/the-creator-of-godwins-law-on-the-inevitability-of-online- nazi-analogies-and-the-right-to-be-forgotten/
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