Klastrup's Cataclysms

There is a story on the international CNN website right now:Police capture teen murder suspect. The apparent boyfriend of a 14-year old teenager has shot her parents after a discussion about her curfew, following they fled and have now been found by the police. Though a very tragic and sad story in itself (my thoughts go to the poor families involved), what caught my ey is that in the article about the incident, CNN/AP tries to the describe the youngsters by referring to..their websites:

Both Ludwig and Kara Borden maintain Web sites. Hers refers to interests in soccer, art and her Christian faith; his says he enjoys "having soft air gun wars" and claims expertise in "getting in trouble." (CNN, Nov. 14)

It is, of course, interesting that a website in a story like this, is - as the most natural thing - mentioned as a source of information about the young people in question; this is a good indication of how people's website have become an integral part of what is identified as their "personality". In this case, I'm also wondering: Do the websites provide us with info about them much quicker and easierly than talking to their friends, and is that why the journalists look at them? Are the journalist of this piece giving us this piece of information because the fact that they both had a website supports the "secret life" perspective on the story? Is it interesting to mention the websites because the information on them support the roles the youngsters have been casted to play by the media? Can we imagine a near future (if not the now) where the police would be keeping tabs on the websites to see if they would be updated with info about the teenagers whereabouts?

# posted by Lisbeth at: 19:08

Comments:

I understand your point that blogs can be analysed for its content of personal information - in the same way any written text can be decoded.
But aren't blogs just a mere constructed self picture - a way of presenting yourself as you want your surroundings to see you?
I see you too add personal information about yourself, but you often do it being very conscious about your audience.
Isn't this simply going to be the same ol' discussion on what can be decoded/extracted from a text?

# posted by Tommy : 11:13 AM

Examples: http://www.klastrup.dk/2001/03/why-digital-art-performances-suck.html

And how about: http://www.klastrup.dk/2002/08/been-reading-emily-dickinson-on-side.html
Newspaper headline: "Ms. Klastrup stated in her blog that: 'I felt a Funeral in my Brain'"

It's all in the eye of the reader.
Hehehe...

# posted by Tommy : 11:51 AM

Tommy, please note that this is NOT blogs Im talking about here, but ordinary WEBSITES. I think there is a huge difference in the ways people present themselves in blogs and on websites in general. I also think, and that is an intuition which stems from personal observation rather than empirical studies, that teenagers are very often NOT aware of the fact that their website (and/or weblog) can be read by a lot of people or who their readers are (ie they are not particularly audience-aware, but seem to be writing to an imaginary community of other teenagers) and they do not try to "construct" an image of themselves in the same way as for instance a professional "blog-writer" might attempt to do.

Finally, what I tried to say was that _the journalist_ saw the website as a "text" from which you can deduct a lot about the person -and perhaps we should be careful about doing this before knowing more about the use of this website. One of my intended points were that the journalists chose to refer to the website because the image of the youngsters portrayed on the website, goes so well with the image the media tries to project. So in general I think you have misread my post somewhat, I will try and clarify it when I have some time.

# posted by Lisbeth : 2:30 PM