Semantic Blogging

Link blog entries with meaningful relations (such as 'agree', 'disagree') instead of just plain link

We are investigating Web Logs ('blogs') as a new paradigm for distributed knowledge construction and sensemaking, whether for Open University students, or communities of interest of any sort. Our interest in Semantic Blogging flows from ongoing research themes in KMi on hypermedia discourse and social software.

Semantic Blogging is for us an intruiging convergence of practices and tools which could help us address long-standing challenges and themes in Knowledge Media:

How can we support distributed sensemaking and argumentation with tools that are both intuitive enough to be quickly learnt, flexible enough for widespread adoption in everyday work, but provide enough semantics for computational support?

How can human-generated narrative co-exist and synergise with computational-semantics to create hybrid layers of meaning?

How do people adopt, break, customize and share metadata schemes?

How can we provide summaries and filters over complex networks of interweaving commentary and inter-document connection?