Photo by: Adrienne Russell
Sitting in a small white office, facing the window with children’s artwork of flowers hanging along the walls, Adrienne Russell is busy at her desk working on her white Mac computer.
Russell is an assistant professor of Digital Media Studies, with expertise in how the Internet helps to shape new media.
She recently completed co-edited International Blogging, with friend and colleague Nabil Echchaibi, an assistant professor at University of Colorado at Boulder in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
The book explores the topic of international blogging and new media.
“Scholars and commentators often generalize about international communication from what they know about American media products and practices, but this doesn’t reflect the various ways communication technologies are adapted and used in various contexts according to different economic, cultural, political realities,” Russell said.
International Blogging is written as a series of chapters by professors and graduate students looking at the way blogging is utilized and viewed throughout the rest of the world.
“Blogging is evolving differently in different places,” Russell said.
Russell and Echchaibi knew each other from time spent at graduate school at Indiana University.
They shared similar ideas about how the Internet was being utilized differently across the world and on international campuses.
But, talking about their ideas and putting together a book were two very different things.
This book took a lot more time.
They had to start with a good idea, draft a proposal and get a publisher.
“Then we kept editing back and forth,” Russell said. “Besides family and life, there weren’t too many obstacles.”
Russell said it took almost two years to get the book published and this was one of the biggest concerns with International Blogging because technology changes so fast.
Russell believes the book translates well into the classes she teaches at DU, Critical Approaches to Digital Media and Issues in Mass Communication History: Activist Media.
Critical Approaches is a graduate-level class that examines the way media and technology impact social, cultural and international life.
Russell’s book specifically looks at the way blogging is used beyond the American model.
“Yet, bloggers around the world producing material for local and national audiences seem to be developing in ways that are distinct from the U.S. model,” said Russell.
“For international communication scholars, these authors and their products have much to say about what lies beyond the hedgerow of A-list bloggers, calling into question assumptions that form the base of much of what we read on blogging and by extension on global amateur or do-it-yourself media,” Russell said.
One chapter in the book is on the youth riots in Paris in 2005 and how, through blogging, the youth could share what was going on and what they were thinking.
“Reporters used that blog as a source for their stories,” said Russell.
Technology changes have had a big impact on how blogging has evolved.
“Audiences are now producers,” said Russell. “Ideas and tools of the media are put into the hands of the people.”
The book is available on Amazon.com for $32.95 and is available in local bookstores.
Russell has contributed and written several other articles that can be found in scholarly journals such as Critical Studies in Media Communication and First Monday.
