From Openness to Commercialisation - Teachers' Self-presentation in the Blogosphere

Abstract

The main research question of the text is: what are the ways of teacher self-presentation in the blogosphere? The aim of the analyses was to reconstruct the meanings given by teachers to their own activity in the blogosphere, assessing the potential of blogs in creating the image of the teacher as a professional. Internet ethnography (i.e. cyberethnography, netnography) was used to analyse the blogs. The selection of the research sample was a two-stage process. In the first stage, the teacher blogosphere was reviewed: more than 70 blogs by English teachers, 50 by Polish teachers and 10 by history teachers were selected. A selection of these was made, taking into account: the timing of the activity (more than one year), the frequency of content updates, the regularity of the entries, and the hypertextual diversity. The following blogs were subjected to qualitative analysis: Baba od polskiego, Kreatywny Polonista, DoKlasy, BB's Playground, Hummingbirds els. Teacher self-presentation was the main research category. A number of features of diaries have been found in the content of the blogs: the process of shaping one's “I”, the embeddedness in the present, the systematic nature of the entries, and the writing and rhetorical practice aimed at influencing the outside world (Maryl, 2013). The “I” presented by teacher-bloggers is characterised by openness, responsiveness, creativity, authenticity, relationality, reflexivity and professionalism. The image of the teacher presented in the blogosphere “seduces”. The analysis confirms the different motivations for “being” in the blogosphere. They relate to responding to young people's expectations for teachers to undertake such online activity and the possibility of co-creating open educational resources. The blog activity of teachers is characterised by the so-called personal branding, i.e. building a personal brand, an image of oneself, which is to convince potential recipients to cooperate. Presenting “yourself” in the blogosphere - enhances, sometimes even improves, the image of the teaching profession in the offline world.