Diane J. Schiano
ABSTRACT
Weblogs (or blogs) are frequently updated webpages with posts typically in reverse-chronological order. Blogging is the latest form of online communication to gain widespread popularity and it is rapidly becoming mainstream. Media attention tends to focus on "heavy-hitting" blogs devoted to politics, punditry and technology, but it has recently become apparent that vast majority of blogs are written by ordinary people for much smaller audiences, and on largely personal themes. Surprisingly little is known about this "blogging by the rest of us", especially from the blogger's point of view. This paper presents the preliminary results of an ethnographic study of blogging as a form of personal expression and communication. We characterize a number of blogging practices, and then consider blogging as personal journaling. We find blogging to be a surprisingly versatile medium, with uses similar to an online diary, personal chronicle or newsletter, and much more. The next few years should provide a fascinating opportunity for research and design as blogging tools improve and blog usage evolves and flourishes.
- Blogger website: <http://new.blogger.com/about.pyra>.Google Scholar
- Gillmor, D. (2003, April 11). "Making the News.". E-Journal: News, Views and a Silicon Valley Diary. <http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/000924.shtml>Google Scholar
- Herring, S., Scheidt, L., Bonus, S. Wright, E. (2004, Jan). Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs. Proceedings of. HICSS'04, Big Island, Hawaii. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Krishnamurthy, S. (2002). The Multidimensionality of Blog Conversations:. Internet Research 3.0, Maastricht, The NetherlandsGoogle Scholar
- Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D. J., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (in progress). "I'm Blogging This": A Closer Look at Why People Blog. In submission to CACM.Google Scholar
- NITLE Blog Census (2003). http://www.blogcensus. net/?page=Home <http://www.blogcensus.net/?page=Home>Google Scholar
- Nussbaum, E. (2004, Jan 11). My So-Called Blog. New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/magazineGoogle Scholar
Index Terms
- Blogging by the rest of us
Recommendations
Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary?
CSCW '04: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work"Blogging" is a Web-based form of communication that is rapidly becoming mainstream. In this paper, we report the results of an ethnographic study of blogging, focusing on blogs written by individuals or small groups, with limited audiences. We discuss ...
Bloggers and Readers Blogging Together: Collaborative Co-creation of Political Blogs
A significant amount of research has focused on blogs, bloggers, and blogging. However, relatively little work has examined blog readers, their interactions with bloggers, or their impact on blogging. This paper presents a qualitative study focusing ...
Catching a viral video
The sharing and re-sharing of videos on social sites, blogs e-mail, and other means has given rise to the phenomenon of viral videos--videos that become popular through internet sharing. In this paper we seek to better understand viral videos on YouTube ...
Comments