GUEST BLOGGER TABITCA: Bloggo research project

Hi (waves from Oop North).

Jon asked me to write this blog after he every kindly stepped into the breach and agreed to help with my research. I lost a blogger ,very careless I know, and was a blog short for my study. So what is all this drivel about and what has it to do with cryptozoology ?

Well due to a series of unfortunate events I am taking a year out and financing myself through an MPhil by research. By the end of it I will be penniless and possibly homeless but what the hell.... I will have learnt something and hopefully had fun. I have long wanted to get cryptozoology into mainstream academic view, and this is a roundabout way of doing it. The rise and popularity of cryptozoological blogs has shown how important this subject is to people from all walks of life and countries. By examining the blogs and websites and comments it is hoped to show how knowledge is passed on via a means that is understood and available to more than one generation, as tellers of oral histories did before the internet became popular.

My study is taking examples of blogs and comments posted and subjecting them to analysis. In order to answer the research questions a two pronged approach will be taken. The first approach is a sample of Blogs will be analysed using narrative analysis and coding the texts chosen, to try to evidence that they are narratives and oral tradition. By involving everything from how many hits a site gets to narrative analysis of the blogs and postings it is hoped to show how they are continuing oral traditions. With the advent of the Internet, a new medium has arisen which has pushed cryptozoology from the oral tradition into a new form of communication. This has a range of social implications as the speed and geographic ease of electronic communication sends the cryptozoological “stories” around the world. By analyzing this transformation it is hoped to see how the Internet and computer mediated communication will change the world of cryptozoology from fringe subject to a new oral tradition and given the respect it deserves.

Obviously it is anonymous and no one is identifiable from the excerpts I will use, but I would not use anybody's blog without permission. The same applies to comments posted, so if you post here and don’t want your words included my email is at the end of this, so just drop me a line and say do not use my stuff.

I realise by leaving my email I risk getting more adverts for Viagra and dubious surgical products than I do already, but that is life on the internet as we know it.

Why cryptozoology you may ask.....because I have been interested since 1971 after a visit to Loch Ness and have been back nearly every year since. I am in Durham at the moment, Big Cat Country and hope to be at the last day of the Big Cat conference if you want to come and say hello. If anyone wants to contact me and ask anything or just wants to comment, please do.

I am only a couple of months into this research so may not know the answers but will do my best to reply:tabitca@hotmail.com.