I can see that by a certain kind of factors and what can be called a chain reaction of curiosity/gossip a word can get into the top ten or, as in this case, first place in the technorati ranking - for some technical reasons like number of hits, search strings, etc, right? I am wondering if the same can be said to blogs as a "collective action tool" in the sense of blogs being manipulated and used collectively to act as a agent of social transformation. In my case, studying the marketing of celebrities in blogs I found out that the exposure of privacy together with the use of language helps the increasing in popularity of certain celebrities here in Japan - the audience consumes the celebrities' images as a specific product that is seen associated with the celebrity in other medium. Aristides Emmanuel Pereira, M.A. Int. Cultural Studies PhD Candidate Department of Multi-Cultural Societies Graduate School of International Cultural Studies Tohoku University Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai-shi 980-8576 JAPAN www.bleepsblops.com Tel. +81-90-6255-2095 ************************************************************************
From: Homero Gil de Zuniga <hgildezuniga@wisc.edu> Reply-To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org To: blogclub@journalism.wisc.edu, Air-L <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Subject: [Air-l] Blog as a collective action tool Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:40:39 -0500
That blogs are rapidly changing the landscape of information is not new. How they do it is very interesting though. Here you have the domino effect in its purest essence. Blogs conspicuously provide an outstanding setting to promote collective action and mobilization (as a paper we recently submitted to AEJMC attest). In this particular case it does not refer to politics. It just exemplifies collective action to change the course of things. Nevertheless, it is a living proof of the potential of blogs as a tool.
Hazruido.com (under the auspicious of Organe cell phone company in Spain) launched a viral contest to position a "the made up word" HABITAQUO into the top ten in Technorati (http://technorati.com <http://technorati.com/> ) . The word is still number one!
I bet that now it is not only the inclusion of the word in many blogs but also the "curiosity circle" produced by people who search the word once they see it is number one.
Here is some info in English
http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archives/2007/04/why_is_habitaquo_technoratis_m ost_searched_tag.asp
http://www.brandtarot.com/blog/?p=711
Here is the info in Spanish for those of you who are able to read it.
Contest page : http://www.hazruido.com/
Google news: http://google.dirson.com/post/3292-palabra-concurso-posicionamiento-2007/
Cheers,
HGZ
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