Comments on: why I fight http://www.catshuler.com/blog/2010/02/08/why-i-fight/ thoughts of a feminist rhetorician Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:17:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Cat http://www.catshuler.com/blog/2010/02/08/why-i-fight/comment-page-1/#comment-9 Cat Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:59:05 +0000 http://www.catshuler.com/blog/?p=154#comment-9 Since I'm not sure if by "select" you mean the process of choosing sample blogs or locating them, I'll answer them both. Locating personal blogs about trauma that fit my criteria was a little challenging. Using Google to search for a combination of the following terms "ptsd, "trauma," "sexual assault," "abuse," "rape," "violence," and similar combined with blog and then using the same search terms in the Google blog search was actually the most effective in the first step of the research. Because personal blogs aren't as widely viewed as other types of blogs, they rarely rank highly on blog-centric sites such as Technorati. Using searches within Wordpress and Blogger were useful because a large number of personal bloggers use their free services. However, for collecting relevant blogs the most effective method was utilizing the blogs themselves, relying upon that beautiful generic convention--the blogroll. Finding blogs that focused on personal trauma took countless long hours of reading, sorting, following links, and coming up with a digital workflow that effectively tracked and archived the relevant blogs. I found that using a feed reader like Google Reader and now feedly was useful during the initial process, as was bookmarking and creating Google Alerts for certain search terms. The entire process is a bit lengthy to get into here, but you've given me great inspiration for a future blog post! The selection of blogs for my research was based on several criteria that evolved as I read through the relevant blogs I collected. My basic criteria for including blogs in my study were the following: the blogs must be single-authored; the blogger must self-identify as a trauma survivor and the majority (approximately 60%) of the posts must concern the healing process, traumatic experiences, or related information; the blogger should not be a trained medical or counseling professional; and the blog should be updated with relative frequency, which is defined as an average of two posts per week. Additional criteria applied concerned the type of trauma experienced, specifically it must fall under my category of "interpersonal violence" and thus would not include must blogs posted by veterans or survivors of terrorism, genocide, or war crimes. Hope this is helpful! Are you researching blogs as well or were you just interested in my research process? Since I’m not sure if by “select” you mean the process of choosing sample blogs or locating them, I’ll answer them both. Locating personal blogs about trauma that fit my criteria was a little challenging. Using Google to search for a combination of the following terms “ptsd, “trauma,” “sexual assault,” “abuse,” “rape,” “violence,” and similar combined with blog and then using the same search terms in the Google blog search was actually the most effective in the first step of the research. Because personal blogs aren’t as widely viewed as other types of blogs, they rarely rank highly on blog-centric sites such as Technorati. Using searches within WordPress and Blogger were useful because a large number of personal bloggers use their free services. However, for collecting relevant blogs the most effective method was utilizing the blogs themselves, relying upon that beautiful generic convention–the blogroll. Finding blogs that focused on personal trauma took countless long hours of reading, sorting, following links, and coming up with a digital workflow that effectively tracked and archived the relevant blogs. I found that using a feed reader like Google Reader and now feedly was useful during the initial process, as was bookmarking and creating Google Alerts for certain search terms. The entire process is a bit lengthy to get into here, but you’ve given me great inspiration for a future blog post!

The selection of blogs for my research was based on several criteria that evolved as I read through the relevant blogs I collected. My basic criteria for including blogs in my study were the following: the blogs must be single-authored; the blogger must self-identify as a trauma survivor and the majority (approximately 60%) of the posts must concern the healing process, traumatic experiences, or related information; the blogger should not be a trained medical or counseling professional; and the blog should be updated with relative frequency, which is defined as an average of two posts per week. Additional criteria applied concerned the type of trauma experienced, specifically it must fall under my category of “interpersonal violence” and thus would not include must blogs posted by veterans or survivors of terrorism, genocide, or war crimes.

Hope this is helpful! Are you researching blogs as well or were you just interested in my research process?

]]> By: lbriggs271 http://www.catshuler.com/blog/2010/02/08/why-i-fight/comment-page-1/#comment-8 lbriggs271 Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:12:25 +0000 http://www.catshuler.com/blog/?p=154#comment-8 Your dissertation topic sounds very interesting. How did you select the blogs to include in your study? Your dissertation topic sounds very interesting. How did you select the blogs to include in your study?

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