Addendum to the Last Blog

I spoke to the current Baseball and former Football League Manager about the difference in our styles and another male member of the league. Both noted that the difference, in their opinion, had nothing to do with gender, but more to do with personality and style. The League Manager acknowledged (in a joking way) that it may have something to do with his ego, but he claimed there was at least one page that did not center on him, which is true. He went on to say he thought his notes were very interesting, despite the fact that they centered around him. He said they were interesting becauese he was one of the "most interesting" parts of the league. He was sort of kidding. The other male member of the league was bothered a little by things being centered around the League Manager's life so much. He said he would prefer a recap of the week and a page that includes everyone in the league.

More Research

I read the article "Women and Chrildren Last: the Discursive construction of Weblogs" and I first thought I probably will not refer to this in my project but then I found some ideas that are pretty interesting. The jist of the article is that most bloggers tend to be teenage girls, yet middle-age men's blogs are more mainstream and viewed as more interesting than other blogs, thereby marginalizing the activities of women and teen bloggers and "reproducting societal sexism and ageism, and misrepresenting the fundamental nature of the weblog phenomenon." While this is interesting, I didn't see how it was relevant until I got to a later part of the article when the writer attributed this sexism, in part to the idea that qualities associated with males are mostly more "highly regarded" than those thought of as female and therefore "Such practices work to relegate the participation of women and other groups to a lower status in the technologically-mediated communication environment that is the blogosphere." Well this got me thinking about the differences I noted earlier between my style of writing as League Manager and my male friend who was League Manager before me. Previously I noted that he tended (and still does with baseball) to make the page somehow about himself, his team, his family, his vacation, his life, etc. while I went out of my way to take myself out of the picture in terms of what I was writing. I am not saying he is a "bad" person or a bad League Manager because of this trait. His pages are interesting to read, and I wonder if they are more or less interesting to others who maybe don't know him as well as I do. And then I started wondering if others viewed his pages as more relevant or more interesting than my pages. The article noted (and I have certainly heard this before) that discourse practices that are associated with men are externally-focused (not true in this case), substantive, intellectual, autoritative and potent, while the female discourse practices are viewed as "emotional, ultimately less important communicative activities. So, are my posts less interesting, less important, viewed in a different light than the male LM's page? I have no quesstions in my interview protocol about this topic. I might need to create some. Will league members tell me the truth? Am I putting them in a difficult position by asking?

Twitter Research

SacFantasyFootball is the twitter account created around the Sac Fantasy Football League I will be focusing on in my project. I read the article "Twitteracy: Tweeting as a New Literacy Practice" by Christine Greenhow and Benjamin Gleason and I was able to make some connections to what I am doing with my project. The tweets that are posted are centered around all of the information coming out because training camp for football has begun. Preseason football is right around the corner so the tweets are about who is hurt, who is playing, etc. The article mentions that "People use twitter for a host of reasons, finding and conversing with friends and acquaintances, making new contacts, connecting to public figures, sharing information, learning about current events..." so all of that is going on here...the writer of the tweets is trying to reach out to the other team owners, to make a connection on a topic that is of interest to all of us and connects all of us, and by hashtagging some of the player's names it's a way to connect with that player or new people who are also tweeting about that player and of course the tweets are about current (football) events that are "in the moment" and constantly changing. The article goes on to say twitter is a way for "information gathering and dissemination" and that people "negotiate meaning" through tweets. So I would say the tweeter is absolutely gathering and disseminating information about football that is relevant to him and relevant to anyone who is part of the league, but the part about negotiating meaning is the most interesting. Because twitter is really an ongoing conversation and the back and forth sort of creates the experience, so there is clearly a type of negotiating meaning going on. So one person tweets about what Aaron Hernandez did and as others respond they are maybe processing what happened and understanding the details of what happened. The article goes on to note that "a tweet stream is constantly evolving" and this is an important part as well, as more information comes in about the Aaron Hernandez case followers of SacFantasyFootball can engage in conversation through tweets to explore thoughts about it. The last interesting part of this is that the article notes that people tweet to "occupy the same physical space" when they are apart. There is a long off-season in football and twitter is absolutely a way to connect everyone during that time. I'm not sure it's accomplished that, but it's possible it could.

More Research

Today I discovered last year they ran the first Fantasy Football Fest in Atlantic City, the first formal event ever centered around Fantasy Football. It ran from Aug 18th to the 19th and was located at the Convention Center. The screenshot posted is from a posting off google that suggests the event was not entirely successful and was not as well attended as anticipated. Still, lots of interesting tidbits. Mostly men attended the event, wearing either the jersey of their favorite team or some type of shirt indicating the fantasy league they belonged to. There were some professional athletes there, two of the biggest names being Michael Vick and Joe Montana. There were 50 venues and so people could get Michael Vick's autograph for $100 or a football signed by Joe Montana for $250. Another posting suggested the presence of the Lingerie Football League "stole the show." As attendees had the opportunity to try out their skills at throwing and catching, competing against members of the Lingerie Football League. People who attended had the chance to take part in several mock drafts and win up to $10,000. I found another article today, written by Katia Dunn, "Fantasy Football: Increasignly a Woman's Game, Too" which indicates "more than 14 percent of Yahoo's fantasy football players are female." So that's my research today. Want to try to watch "the League" tonight.

Thinking About/Doing a little Research on the Ways Fantasy Have I nfiltrated Pop Culture

So I've been doing some research to begin writing the first part of my chapter, that explains the game a bit. I've been thinking about the way fantasy has infiltrated pop culture and I've discovered some interesting things. Although I don't believe any of my sources can be viewed as "reliable" sources, still there's quite a bit out there that is interesting. What I have posted above is a program that math teachers can use to help students learn math as they play a fantasty sport. Dan Flockhart started this program, and this is, by far, one of the more interesting things I discovered. I believe this is the only example I have found so far of using fantasy sports in a school setting. Some of the other things I learned about fantasy (that I didn't know) was that there is a show on FX that follows six fictional characters part of a fantasy football league that has been running since 2009. It's called "The League" and you can get the older shows on demand (I know what I'll be watching tonight). The show began in 2009 and is still running. Ratings recently went up because episodes became available on demand. There was a documentary made about fantasy football in 2009 called "10 yards" that did not get a very good review by the New York Times. There is a show on MTV called Fantasy Music Tycoon that is modeled after the sports games that began in 2009. So I'm thinking about that as a possible part of something I write, maybe just the first part where I explain things. I could reference some of these examples to show that fantasy has, in ways, become a part of pop culture. I am having trouble getting some legitimate sources in regards to this. The other thing to consider is youtube. I always turned to youtube to find funny clips about fantasy, and there are plenty out there. I need to consider how I can include that as well. Youtube is actually a huge part of my writing when I write as League Manager. If I find a good clip, I might base my entire post around it, although it usually is the other way around.

Analysis of the Fantasy Baseball Website

There are advertisements in the right corner of the site that change. In the lower right-hand corner there are pictures and links to ESPN fantasy baseball columnists. There are five ESPN columnists and one "Daily Notes" with notes for the day. The information is all free and is about current events in fantasy; players who are hurt, players coming back, doing well, doing poorly, etc. There is a black bar just below the logo "Fantasy Baseball League Manager's Edition" that says "My ESPN" and lists various sports and you can click on any of them. This seeme to relate to sports in general, not fantasy. The gray bar directly beneath it has things to click on like "Daily Notes" that related exclusively to fantasy baseball, but not specifically to our league. The mostly black tabs below that relate specifically to our league and are the tabs team owners click on to manipulate their team and to make moves. Most of the material beneath that (other than the advertisements relate to fantasy) until you get to the very bottom where there are more advertisements.