Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Research on Blogging as a Social Activity: More notes on the affordances of the Read/Write Web

This post focuses on an article published by Bonnie Nardi and colleagues (2004a) titled, Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary?

Nardi et al (2004a) present an "ethnographic study of blogging focusing on blogs, written by individuals or small groups, with a limited audience" (p. 222). This study examines blogger motivations, the quality of social interactivity on a set of weblogs, and the relationships of bloggers to their audience. This study concludes with design recommendations for blogging applications based on the authors' findings.

The researchers conducted interviews (audiotaped) with 23 bloggers (sixteen men, seven women, aged 19-60) over a 3 month period as well as multiple close readings of the bloggers' posts. All blogging participants lived in California or New York. Ten were either graduate or undergraduate students at Stanford University. The others were students and graduates of American universities, with one participant haling from a European university. The researchers employed a "snowball" sampling technique whereby participants informed researchers of other people whom the researchers might connect with for further interviews. Finally, the researchers report maintaining their own weblog in order to become familiar with blogging and to discuss their research together. Most informants were interviewed twice, with follow up interviews conducted by phone, email, and instant messaging.

Noted previous research Several researchers have attempted to analyze reasons why people blog and how bloggers manage relationships with their readers (Gumbrecht, M., 2004; Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, & Swartz, 2004; Schiano, D. et al 2004). Herring et al. (2004) conducted a quantitative analysis of 203 randomly selected weblogs focusing on author characteristics, reasons for blogging, frequency of posts, usage of weblog features, and frequency of commenting. This study found a majority of weblogs (70%) were online journals/diaries. More specifically, Herring et al (2004) noted three primary types of weblogs in their research:

• individually authored personal journals
• filters -- newsletters containing links with commentary
• knowledge logs -- academic or professional commentaries

Motivation Nardi et al's (2004a) research revealed that people within their study found weblogs through other blogs they were reading, through friends and colleagues, via a link associated with a user profile or home page, or a listing on the side of a web page called a blog roll, i.e., a hyperlinked list of weblogs a blogger fancies or finds interesting (p. 224). Their research also uncovered instances of "blog burnout" (p. 224) where bloggers stopped blogging for both short and long periods of time. Nardi et al (2004a) also note that from a blogger's point of view, a weblog is more than a diary--it is more like a "radio show" (p. 222) or a broadcasting event with some to little interactivity.

Object-oriented activity in blogging Nardi et al (2004a) turn to activity theory as a lens for examining "the 'objects' motivating human activity" (p. 225). They report:

"Blogs are manifestations of diverse social motives, in which the inscriptions in the blog communicate specific social purposes to others" (p. 225).

In their sample, Nardi et al (2004a) note how several "objects" motivated bloggers to blog. These include:

• updating others on their activities or whereabouts
• expressing opinion to influence or persuade others
• seeking outside opinions and feedback
• thinking by writing
• releasing emotional tension

Nardi et al (2004a) report that these objects are not mutually exclusive. For example, within their sample, some bloggers were motivated by more than one of the aforementioned categories. Nardi et al (2004a) also point out that, in general, blogs are not restricted to these particular objects associated with this particular sample.

Thinking as Writing
In their study, Nardi et al (2004a) share evidence of a blogger who reported that in his mind "writing and thinking" are "synonymous" (p. 227). Knowing there was an audience, or public, following his weblog posts stimulated him to write and think. Nardi et al (2004a) note:

"While 'thinking" might seem a solitary activity, or one not quite social, in blogging the presence of the audience and the writer's consciousness of the audience clearly introduce the social into the individual's thought process (as Vygotsky argued, more generally, 70 years ago). 'Thinking by writing' embeds cognition in a social matrix in which the blog is a bridge to others for getting explicit feedback, but also a means by which to regulate one's own behavior (writing) through connecting with an audience" (p. 227).

This quote exemplifies how the researchers frame the power inherent in weblogging as a means for showing how knowledge can be created, transmitted, reflected upon, refined, and republished/reshared. This idea is clearly related to the notion of a Vygotsky Space (Harre, 1984; Gavalek & Raphael, 1996), where the process of learning is cyclical and evolutionary, and wherein learning and change result in a cumulative and transactional process on both an individual and collective levels.

Limited blogging Interactivity
The sample bloggers under investigation reported wanting feedback from readers, but not intimate, give-and-take exchanges. Bloggers in this study report more civility in their post comments compared to a listserv, where "rage and invective" are not uncommon. The researchers suggest that this may be due to the feeling that a blogger is speaking to a more general public as opposed to a specific individual on a listserv.

Nardi et al (2004a) note that within their research sample, comments where often visually and rhetorically hidden, behind the scenes, so to speak. In other words, comments where often linked to blog posts and required an additional step to view them, thus displacing their immediate impact as well as suggesting their secondary stature to the original blog post.

For the bloggers in Nardi et al's (2004a) study, a weblog served as a "refuge from the intense interaction of other forms of communication" (p. 228). Bloggers were free of a conversational partner's reaction to what was said--there is little interruption to the flow of writing. In this sense, a blog post could be likened to a "monologue" where "other voices" cannot intrude. In general, Nardi et al (2004a) report that sample blogs within their study received little if any feedback on their weblogs (while many participants reported receiving feedback via other communication media).

Nardi et al (2004a) liken public weblogs to broadcasting medium. Bloggers in this study engaged or interacted with their public but found ways to control interaction "so that it was infrequent and less emotional, mor ereflective, than in more interactive media or face to face communication" (p. 228).

Blogging as a Social Activity
In terms of blogging as a social activity, Nardi et al (2004a) point to evidence of how blogs and blog posts are initiated. Evidence presented by their research show a pattern of activity that generally follows one of the following patterns:

• friends urging friends to blog,
• readers letting bloggers know that they are ready for a post,
• bloggers crafting posts with their audience in mind, and
• bloggers continuing conversations across multiple media platforms outside their weblog (p. 224).

These patterns suggest that that not only do blogs create an audience, but that a bloggers audience creates the weblog (p. 224). In other words, as Nardi et al (2004a) affirm, "readers create blogs as much as writers" (p. 225). Wherein diaries have historically existed as a personal medium, weblogs can be thought of as a more self-aware medium in that a blog's content is shared with a public. Perhaps it is more like a dance or a "studied minuet" between a blogger and his or her public.

As such, Nardi et al (2004a) research suggests that bloggers are aware of a larger public when writing posts, that they consider "audience attention, feedback, and feelings as they write" (p. 225 - my emphasis). More specifically, Nardi et al (2004a) share this finding:

"The blog is not a closed world, but part of a larger communication space in which diverse media, and face to face communication, may be brought to bear" (p. 225).

As such, unlike private diaries, the act of blogging is, by nature, an open social activity.

Discussion and future research
Weblogging is a social activity enacting a wide variety of social purposes. Bloggers are able to broadcast messages without interruption to any one tuning in. Comments are "subserviant" to the body of a blog post, as they are on talk radio stations, and comment exchanges/conversations in the comment section of a weblog are limited at best as compared to other communications media. Like radio stations, weblogs can topically be about anything. Nardi et al (2004a) note:

"Our research leads us to speculate that blogging is as much about reading as writing, as much about listening as talking" (p. 231).

Even though participants in this study preferred to keep interactions with readers at arm's length, all blog writers reported desiring a connection to their audience--they wanted to make their presence and thoughts known, their voices heard.

[Note: Nardi et al (2004a) regularly suggest that "a blog" is social in nature. In this sense, I believe Nardi et al (2004a) are referring to a blog as an individual blog post, that is, a public record published online by an author or group of authors. A blog as a Web application exists as an address, a structure, that houses blog posts. I find it confusing to try to read Nardi et al's (2004) work any other way.]

 

References:

Gavalek, J. R. & Raphael, T. E. (1996). Changing talk about text: New roles for teachers and students. Language Arts, 73, pp. 182-192.

Gumbrecht, M. (2004). Blogs as "protected space". WWW 2004 Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics. Harré, R. (1984). Personal being: A theory for individual psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Herring, S., Scheidt, L., Bonus, S., & Wright, E. (2004). Bridging the gap: A genre analysis of weblogs. Proceedings 37th Annual HICSS Conference, 2004. Big Island, Hawaii.

Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D. J., & Gumbrecht, M. (2004a). Blogging as social activity, or, would you let 900 million people read your diary? Proceedings of CSCW 2004, November 6-10, 2004, Chicago, IL.

Nardi, B. A., Schiano, D., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). "I'm blogging this": A closer look at why people blog. Communications of the ACM. December, 2004.

Schiano, D., Nardi, B. A., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). Blogging by the rest of us. Proceedings CHI 2004, (April 2004), Vienna.

 

Google images
Arm's length -- http://www.ccg.org/english/s/Image1063.gif
Audience -- http://www.aspenfilm.org/images/logos/AspenSF06Audience300dpi.jp
Ladder -- http://www.acejanitorial.co.uk/images/products/CJ040.JPG
Cut Chemist - The Audience is Listening http://www.djouls.com/jurassic5/images/Cut_Chemist-The_Audien