The article I found to use in conjunction with West's is "Blogging: Self Presentation and Privacy" by Karen McCullagh. I found this article through the UW article search using the boolean terms we discussed in class.
Summary: The article focuses on examining how much bloggers value online privacy and how safe they expect information posted online to be. McCullagh concludes that her findings support the idea that bloggers either accept privacy risks or "employ mechanisms to protect [their] privacy" in order to "work on their self-identity."
How the author supports the argument: McCullagh uses the findings of an international online survey of bloggers that she facilitated to support her argument. She employs the use of tables showing percentages of responses to certain questions to prove consensual agreement (at least through the people surveyed) of what she is arguing.
Connections between the reading and my research: The aspect of privacy per se is not exactly central to the argument I am planning for the second essay, but parts of this article I think will be very helpful information. Mostly relevant is the argument McCullagh makes that since self-identity can only be developed through social interaction with others, expressive privacy and reflexive formations of self-identity are connected. This can be applied to classrooms vs blogs where the amount of assumed privacy differs because of my argument that there is a cognitive disconnect between academic material done and submitted in class and online blogs used to write or evaluate academic material. And, further, that this disconnect allows freedom of expression which (as evidenced in my blog) facilitates deeper learning.
BTW, what I just wrote is a perfect example of my argument because through just sitting here typing out my thoughts without fear of immediate evaluation, I expressed my argument in the most clear way I think I've been able to so far.
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