Vivian Winters is the kind of person you find yourself unable to resent. She’s tall, pretty, and sugar-sweet. She’s also whip-smart and business savvy, and a blog she started in secret her freshman year has morphed into a business making her thousands a month – it’s exactly the sort of success you’d begrudge a person less likable than her, though I doubt she’d have found it, had she been less personable. Obviously, she’s not a flawless human, but she’s a thoroughly good person. Having lived with her for a year and change, and dabbled in blogging myself, I’m not exactly unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the blogging world. From social media algorithms, to search engine optimization, to consistently branding yourself, I’m aware of the small
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What I found was that the interview process as a conversational structure disrupted our usual gendered interactions, and our perspective as women was a defining force in the conversation itself – though I didn’t know it at the time.
I expected Vivian to be pretty comfortable in the interview. As a blogger, she has plenty of practice speaking with authority – she even blogs about blogging pretty often. That comfort, combined with our friendship, made me confident going into the process. When women interview other women, Golombisky (2006) feels that “the charade of rapport is likely to be abandoned once the research is complete” – and this is a difference for my interview (p. 181). I live with my interviewee, and I’ve known her for eight years now. The rapport was pre-established and genuine, and (hopefully) not primed to be abandoned anytime soon. However, a preexisting rapport is not necessarily an unwavering one. A few times in the conversation, the interview process …show more content…
I’m suddenly curious as to whether the majority of those bloggers are women as well, or if the split is more even, or if, as I suspect, it favors men. After all, the topics of technology and entertainment are considered much more public than things like cooking and childrearing, and I’m left wondering if Golombisky’s separate spheres pervade the blogging world as well. Are women blogging in other niches more likely to face harassment? Are there even as many women bloggers beyond the “big three?” It seems entirely possible that Vivian and I, as women blogging, fail to see outside out own spheres and limit our conversations, without even
What I found was that the interview process as a conversational structure disrupted our usual gendered interactions, and our perspective as women was a defining force in the conversation itself – though I didn’t know it at the time.
I expected Vivian to be pretty comfortable in the interview. As a blogger, she has plenty of practice speaking with authority – she even blogs about blogging pretty often. That comfort, combined with our friendship, made me confident going into the process. When women interview other women, Golombisky (2006) feels that “the charade of rapport is likely to be abandoned once the research is complete” – and this is a difference for my interview (p. 181). I live with my interviewee, and I’ve known her for eight years now. The rapport was pre-established and genuine, and (hopefully) not primed to be abandoned anytime soon. However, a preexisting rapport is not necessarily an unwavering one. A few times in the conversation, the interview process …show more content…
I’m suddenly curious as to whether the majority of those bloggers are women as well, or if the split is more even, or if, as I suspect, it favors men. After all, the topics of technology and entertainment are considered much more public than things like cooking and childrearing, and I’m left wondering if Golombisky’s separate spheres pervade the blogging world as well. Are women blogging in other niches more likely to face harassment? Are there even as many women bloggers beyond the “big three?” It seems entirely possible that Vivian and I, as women blogging, fail to see outside out own spheres and limit our conversations, without even