14 September 2010

Follow-up to Blog Post

In my last post, I mentioned that you can monitor what different WordPress blogs are saying about specific issues by browsing posts that have been tagged with particular keywords like "refugees," "forced migration," etc. I should have also noted that these social tags have been added by the authors themselves, so it's a very subjective process. While most of the time, the tags actually describe the content, there are occasionally instances when tags are used for no discernible reason, or they have a different meaning than yours or mine. For example, "forced migration" is often used in the computer context when certain applications are terminated and users are forced to migrate to other systems. Or the term "refugees" might be used in unexpected ways - for example, I've seen blogs titled "Golf Refugees" and "Bubblewrap Refugees" (???!). The moral of the story is not every post with a particular tag is going to be relevant!

One work-around, at least for the tag "refugees," is to subscribe to the Refugee Research Network's RSS feed for posts on WordPress.com tagged "refugees". The posts are displayed in full so you can tell immediately whether or not they are going to be relevant. You also don't get the ads, which is always a plus!

By the way, I use keywords to describe the content in all my postings. You can subscribe to an RSS feed for each of these labels if you are interested in tracking new content that focuses on particular issues (for example, unaccompanied minors or human trafficking). Read this post for information on how to do this.

Tagged Web Sites/Tools.

No comments: