ORG COMM

Blogroll (Links List) Tutorial

I put up a tutorial for how to create a blogroll (links list) in the sidebar of your blog.

You can find a link to the tutorial here and in my links list under "HTML / BLOG HELP." You must add at least one blogroll to your blog—due end of next week (see my earlier post or the course calendar).

Some of you have already built blogrolls. Let me clarify that you DO NOT have to put everyone's (all classmates') blogs in your blogroll.

Services like Bloglines serve as both news aggregators and blogroll tools. Even if you use Bloglines as your news aggregator, you don't have to build a blogroll from it that includes everyone's blogs.

Bloglines allows you to create and name different folders that can hold different things. Like "Study Guide Blogs," "Project Blogs," "Favorite Sites," "Music on the Web," whatever you can think of. Then you should choose, according to how you want your blog to look and what you want others to see, which folders you want to make blogrolls out of.

[Update: I'm getting feedback that, as far as news aggregators go, Pluck rocks.]

What is Org Comm?: A Tightly Compressed Intro

Definition 1

Org Comm is the application of methods—some intrinsic to, some extrinsic to, the academic discipline of Comm—to a domain of phenomena (which the methods also shape [some would say "create"]), through a particular history: to wit, the history of industrial and post-industrial sites of production, and the concomitant development of public universities and the social sciences.

Definition 2

To put it another way, Org Comm is the totality of scholarly approaches within the discipline of Communication—and the larger, multi-disciplinary, field of Org Studies—to understanding modern organizational life, mostly in business organizations. Org Comm rose out of the (post WWII) national determination to solve the problems of industry with the help of the social sciences, to rationalize business processes, and to motivate workers. (Several more recent Org Comm studies have called into question these very founding premises.)

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Org Comm draws on the insights of, among other disciplines, Sociology, Philosophy, Industrial Psychology, and Business Management. From within the discipline of Comm itself, Org Comm borrows from Interpersonal Communication, Intercultural Communication, and Rhetoric.

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So how do we recognize an Org Comm study when we see it?

• An Org Comm study draws on the literature of Org Comm; it addresses a concern or problem within the field.
• An Org Comm study deals with all elements of the basic Comm model in some form or fashion; the Shannon & Weaver model is a good touchstone. [link 1] [link 2] [link 3]
• An Org Comm study deals with the basic Comm model in the context of groups (multiple "Senders" and "Receivers").
• An Org Comm study identifies and describes an organization (whether that organization is enduring, temporary, or ad hoc) which is the primary context of its analysis.

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The basic Shannon & Weaver model is pretty plain; what concepts and motifs do we need to make it serviceable for Org Comm?

• Bureaucratic rationality and industrialization [link]
• Material context (including technologies) [link]
• Network analysis [link 1] [link 2] [link 3]
• Diffusion (of ideas / innovations) [link 1] [link 2]
• Leadership [link]
• Discourse Analysis [link]
• Ethnography [link]
• Culture [link]
• Identity (class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality) [link]
• Ideology [link]

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Like other Social Sciences, Org Comm relies on both quantitative and qualitative research methods.

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Org Comm seems too complicated; what is it again?!

• Org comm is not easy to define! (It is promiscuous, drawing on other fields.)
• Org comm is a specific (but not simple) historical development (around a century old).
• Org comm can be descriptive, prescriptive (practical), or critical in its approach.

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So Dr. G, how does our upcoming course project fit in with all this?

• It will be prescriptive.
• It will rely mostly on qualitative analysis (Network Analysis, Ethnography, and Discourse Analysis are all possibilities).
• It will deal with an ad hoc organization.

How to Add Line Breaks Between Paragraphs

The WSWYG editor built into the Blogger web application is pretty good, but sometimes "what you see is not what you get."

If line-breaks (spaces) between paragraphs in your post are not showing up, go back and edit the post using this tag:

<br>

That should add the needed break. If it doesn't, try two of them back to back:

<br><br>

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Hot Tip : My favorite HTML "Cheat Sheet" is here. You can also find this link in my left sidebar under "HTML / BLOGGER HELP."

Setting up a News Aggregator & Blogroll

I would like each of you to have a News Aggregator and Blogroll set up by no later than Sunday night, October 3rd, at 11:59PM.

For the significance of aggregators and blogrolls as tools of organizational communication, see my earlier post here.

Aggregators

Web Syndication is a powerful tool that organizations are beginning to use in conjunction with blogs. Your Blogger blogs produce a feed, a sort of constantly updated index that alerts anyone who subscribes to your blog when you have posted something new. In this course I would like for all of you (01 & 02) to set up a news aggregator and subscribe to the feeds of both the Study Guide and Project blogs of everyone in both sections (01 & 02).

This will help us to communicate better as a class, and it will give us some experience with one of the newest communication technologies organizations are using. There are two types of news aggregators. Web based, and local. The advantage of the web-based aggregators is that you can access your feeds from any computer. If you use lab computers, I suggest you use a web-based aggregator. With a web-based aggregator there is no program (application) to download. A list of the best aggregators can be found in my left sidebar under "SYNDICATION TOOLS."

There are two types of syndication formats, Atom and RSS. By default, Blogger blogs are set up for Atom syndication. To add the Atom feed of a classmate's blog to your aggregator, add the following suffix to their blog address: /atom.xml

For example, Gage's Study Guide blog address is:

http://twelvegage.blogspot.com/

So his Atom syndication address would be:

http://twelvegage.blogspot.com/atom.xml

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[Note: the (RSS) feed for my blog is: http://mod.blogs.com/org_comm/index.rdf]

Blogrolls

There are several other important tools that can be used in conjunction with blogs. A particularly useful one is the blogroll (also known as a "links list"). You can usually find them in the sidebar of a blog, such as the left and right sidebars of my blog. In this course I would like for all of you (01 & 02) to set up a blogroll on your Project blog.

You can set up your own links list by inserting links in your blog's sidebar. This involves going into your blog's template. Read this Blogger help article about templates (scroll down to the section on the "sidebar").

There are two ways to set up a blogroll. One is to type all the links manually in the sidebar section of your blog template; another is to use a blogrolling service. Two of these (free) services can be found in my left sidebar under "LINKING TOOLS."

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How will I know if you've done the assignment?

• I will be able to verify your blogroll by looking at your blog.

• To help me verify your news aggregator, I would like you to take a "screen shot" of it, after you have set it up, and email that pic to me. Instructions can be found here for PC. For Mac, use "Grab" which is in your "Utilities" folder.

New Study Guide Assignment (01 & 02)

The next post to your study guide blog will be due by Thursday Friday night at 11:59PM. It should be approximately 250 words, and over Chapter 2. Here's a general description of how to do this.

On Friday Saturday I will go through and grade the first and second Study Guide blog posts. I will also grade both of your blogs (Study Guide and Project Blog) for how closely you have followed my instructions in setting them up. Right now everyone has a perfect grade. Call, IM, or email before Thursday night if you are having any trouble.

• Make sure you've followed the blogging instructions here.

• If you still need help with hyperlinks, look here.

• And when linking to a classmate's blog, don't forget to use the permalink.

Final note: Some of your links don't work. Double-check your links, and fix them if they don't work. I will count off on Friday if they're not fixed.