USA2012 – The Blog

As discussed just the other day – recently I’m writing mostly not on this blog. Umso mehr am I happy to direct you to my new blog project I started with Josef Barth and Stefan Bachleitner. USA2012.at will cover the US elections from a campaigning point of view. We will present a campaign strategy every Sunday, the Pick of the Week on Monday presents a primary source article and gives some background, Wednesday is our Video-Wednesday and in between we try to write what every we care about. I, for example, just went to the CampaignTech conference last week and blogged about that.

Please check it out, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook too!

Always under construction

You know how it is with blogs. You write some. And then you don’t. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. Just not here. On Blueprint Interactive’s Blog I’ve been writing a lot about various news and trends in the Social Media world. For example an article about why you should give Google+ another chance (by now I revoke my arguments, tho). Another post I wrote talked about what Eli Pariser calls „the Filter Bubble“: Facebook is not showing your posts to your fans – and what to do against it.

I wrote about the five best things about the Personal Democracy Forum ’11 and a post about the new Facebook ads management.

You see, I’ve been busy. Just not on this blog. But because it’s almost a new year, I updated the about section of this site. So feel free to browse.

Blogday 2009

Happy Blogday everyone! The concept is pretty simple: Every participating Blogger presents five blogs s/he likes. For example, Marko of www.politx.at likes me (yay) and will link to me. For more info go to: http://www.blogday.org/

The following has no particular order. And of course there are tons and tons more, I could present, there’s Iza who just started teaching at UIllinois (www.irenezavarsky.net) and Ingrid Brodnigs, (http://brodnig.org), FALTER journalist, who posts all her articles online, as well as PROFIL journalist Joe Barth (http://josefbarth.com) or http://happyschnitzel.wordpress.com a writer’s blog.

www.baeck.at

In very few cases I agree with Austrian Blogger Gerald Bäck, in fact most of the time when I read his political posts I cringe. He says things like: „At first I wasn’t opposed to the black and blue coalition“ (between conservative ÖVP and the right wing FPÖ) or almost titles his post „Political Correctness Terror“ (then doesn’t, but mentiones that he almost did). And: He wanted to participate in the Green Party Primaries or rather: was surprised that he was rejected.

None the less: If there was something like an Austrian Blogosphere, he would be one of the Top 5. And his lists of journalists on Twitter is just great.

http://b-blog.at

Aaron Bruckmiller just graduated high school and his somewhere in India, so there’s a chance that it all was procrastination and the blog won’t be continued, but let’s hope not. Aaron, who is/was politically active in the Upper Austrian School Students Movement writes about everything Upper Austrian and politics.

www.thetvaddict.com

Trust the addict! Be it Kyle XY or Greek, shows I never thought that I would like, I fell in love with because of the addict. Although the blog looks very professional, it is still written by TV fans, not journalists (but with all access passes). A must for every TV addict.

Homopoliticus.de

There is no better blog about (german) politics and the internet that this one. period.

blog.sektionacht.at

When in 2007 then prime minister Gusenbauer (SPÖ) didn’t abide his promisses, a bunch of young social democrats decided to stay in the party, but to organize themselves in a protest group. A variety of people, who now live in Berlin, Argentine and Vienna blogs about economic policies, progressive reading suggestions and much more.

Homepage Updates I

This headline is an elegant understatement. Indeed, I updated the Texts part of my homepage. It’s not that I updated it, but what I updated it with. Long speech short sense (I love translating German idioms in English): I updated it with my thesis!!! It’s in German, but here’s the abstract. If you are able to read German and don’t have anything better to do: I’d be happy if you read (parts of) my thesis and tell me what you think.

Pick, Carl: Serial Narration in Children’s Literature. Thesis, Vienna, 2009.

In this thesis, I create a typology of children’s book series. I analyze series from four different countries: the Italian “Adventures of Pinocchio,” the Austrian “Die Knickerbocker-Bande,” the German “Die Wilden Fußballkerle” and the American “The Spiderwick Chronicles,” and consider specifically the areas of fabula-episode-relation, beginnings and endings, and the relationship of the author to his/her work and story/discourse time. The paper defines three major different types of children’s book series: “Serie”, which has both a contained episode and an overlapping fabula;. “Reihe”, which has only fabula contained within the episode; “Feuilletonroman”, which is best defined with the already established definition: „Every fabula that is published in a periodical publication“.
There exists a phenomenon in current children’s literature called the illusion of the real, especially in children’s books where the level of border crossing between reality and fiction reaches a new climax: In two of the four series analyzed, it’s not only the author who stages himself as a witness-narrator, but protagonists of later episodes who have read earlier ones. While series in other media create cliffhangers by breaking on the peak of suspense, the books analyzed here use the narrator to achieve tension at the end of an episode.

In general, I conclude that similarities prevail over differences in children’s book series. While the plot may vary, the formal frameworks are very strict and serve as a narrative guide for the young reader.

Wie es hier weitergeht…

Ich verließ Wooster. Das sollte schon durchgedrungen sein. Um genau zu sein, bin ich heute nach 16 stündiger Reise in Wien angekommen.

Mit dem Abenteuer wie mit dem Blog ist es damit aber noch lange nicht vorbei.

Und dann? Dann heißt es, sich wieder in Österreich einzuleben. Nachdem ich einige raunzerte Standardpostings gelesen habe, könnte das schwerer sein, als gedacht. Schwerer, als umgekehrt, sogar? Ich werde es herausfinden. Und ich werde hier davon berichten.