Week 4 catch-up task...

So I've searched through the library catalogue for articles to do with my essay topic. Although I don't know my exact question just yet, my topic has something to do with how blogs and new forms of communication technologies have really become communication for the masses. They celebrate and congratulate mediocrity. People become obsessed with the instant messaging world and many people judge their self worth and popularity on things like MySpace friends and blog comments. People are searching for their 5 minutes of fame and fortune. On blogs, nothing has to be justified or researched, let alone gramatically correct, and more often than not the views expressed are purely opinion. Most of what is written is basically rubbish that isn't even worth writing. Conversely, if someone actually has something inteligent to share or discuss there is a very small chance that anyone else will actually find because of all the other rubbish that is there to sort through.
Blogs, because of their growing popularity and readership, and "friend" networks on myspace for example, also have an increasing power to influence attitudes and behaviours of the population. Political blogs and "Edublogs" as well as the day to day "trying to be connected and famous" blogs could be harnessed as a cery powerful tool for our politicians and activists in the near future.

Weeeell that's the general idea but I haven't formulated an actual topic as yet....
3 articles that I found that could be relevant are:

Gregg, Melissa. Feeling ordinary: blogging as conversational scholarship [Paper in: Counter Heroics and Counter-Professionalism in Cultural Studies. Gregg, Melissa and Burgess, Jean (eds).] [online]. Continuum (Perth), v.20, no.2, June 2006: (147)-160. Availability: ISSN: 1030-4312.

Nguyen, An. Journalism in the wake of participatory publishing [online]. Australian Journalism Review, v.28 no.1 July 2006: 143-155. Availability: ISSN: 0810-2686.

Quinn, Stephen and Quinn-Allan, Deirdre. User-generated content and the changing news cycle [online]. Australian Journalism Review, v.28 no.1 July 2006: 57-70. Availability: ISSN: 0810-2686.

Doing this task really got me thinking about what I want to say and what the actual point of all my earlier ramblings could be. Through these articles I also read about increasing trends towards "participatory" or "citizen" journalism with less reliance on the traditional forms (eg. newspapers). This is also interesting considering I'm actually doing a journalism degree so the nature of my future job may end up a little different! I hope it's not confined to sitting at a computer all day on a blog....not exaaaaactly my idea of fun! haha