Weinberg junior Sam Wing is looking forward to not sending out mass e-mails to keep in touch with family and friends when he goes abroad this Spring Quarter. Instead, he will be blogging.
Many Northwestern study abroad students have recently turned to blogging as a more low-maintenance and interactive way to update family and friends about their abroad experiences. Posting online from abroad enables students to show and tell through text, pictures and video, and allows for a level of detail that e-mails do not.
“I had several friends who went abroad and sent mass e-mails,” Wing said. “There was just something missing in those big blocks of text: rich detail that I got from chatting with them on Skype and seeing pictures.”
Weinberg senior Courtney Sharpe was able to get that “rich detail” on the blog she kept while abroad in Israel during Fall Quarter. She said she particularly liked how she was able to use her blog as a “storytelling apparatus,” including things like a picture tour of a Bethlehem church on her page.
In addition to their versatility, blogs are particularly attractive because of their ease of use, said Fordham University Communication and Media Studies Prof. Paul Levinson, who has been studying the practice for about 10 years.
“The key point is that you don’t have to be a professor or an author to keep a blog,” he said. “It’s easy to do and doesn’t cost a thing.”
It was this ease of use that attracted Weinberg junior Chenault Taylor, currently abroad in Paris, to keep an online journal.
“I could tell it would be hard to keep everyone in the loop,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Instead of forwarding a zillion e-mails, I can just send the link to family and friends.”
All three students have chosen or plan on choosing to keep their blogs private to only friends and family, a decision Levinson said is wise. It’s important to limit the amount of personal information you make available to the public, especially when abroad, he said.
Blogging, which started gaining popularity around 2002, is a useful tool for a myriad of interests, ranging from study abroad students sharing their experiences with family and friends to expressing political views for all to see, Levinson said.
“When I was in college, I wasn’t able to communicate with family and friends even over e-mail,” he said. “I definitely wish blogging had existed back then.”
