As many of you may or may not know, BlogCampaigning was originally created almost a year ago as part of Espen Skoland's thesis on politics and blogging for his Master of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communications (Honours) at Griffith University, Australia. This site has served as a way for Espen to interact with the online community as he developed his thoughts on the topic of blogs and political campaigning. While it has since grown to include my view points on the PR industry, Web 2.0, and other miscellany as well as the video game theory of Jens, and the work of a few other contributors, the essential goal of the site has remained the same.
Espen is currently putting the finishing touches on the thesis, and he will be making it available online both as a pdf and as a series of posts her on BlogCampaigning.
We are planning on posting the thesis in reverse order (with the last part of the paper posted chronologically first, the first section of the paper published chronologically last). This will, it will show up in the right order when read online and via a feed reader. If anyone has a better suggestion, we are very open to hearing it (please leave a comment, or e-mail me).
As the BlogCampaigning site manager, I'm very excited about this, because I think that this is the first time that a major academic paper has been published in this manner. If anyone wants to prove me wrong on this point, I'll buy them a drink if they come to the Toronto area.
This won't be the end of BlogCampaigning, either. Jens, Espen, and I have discussed how much we enjoy working on the site that we want it go on.
So thank you for checking us out now and then, and we hope you continue to do so even after this online publication of Espen's thesis.
-Parker, BlogCampaigning Site Manager