Beyond the Unusual: Weblogs as Genre

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Beyond the Unusual Weblogs as Genre

• Susan C. Herring
• Lois A. Scheidt
• Elijah Wright
• Sabrina Bonus
• Indiana University, Bloomington

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Popular view of blogs

• Radically new
• Unique to the Web (Blood 2002)
• Democratizing/socially transformative
• Interlinked (Halavais a blog is part of the
  Blogosphere)
• Knowledge creating (Burg emergent
  intelligence)
• Influential
• A spreading movement with an illustrious future
• Produced mostly by educated, adult males

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Males predominate in

• Blog authors mentioned in mainstream news reports
  of blogging
• E.g., the downfall of Trent Lott (Glaser 2002)
• Media photographs of blog authors
• E.g., scholars who blog (CHE - Glenn 2003)
• Attendees at a blogging conference at the Harvard
  Berkman Center
• Cartoons about blogging
• E.g., Boox (The New York Times 2003)
• Presentations on weblogs at this conference

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Sources of popular view

• Mass media (e.g., Glaser 2002 Lasica 2001)
• Blog authors (e.g., Dave Winer, Rebecca Blood)
• Reproduced in assumptions of scholarly studies
  (e.g., Krishnamurty 2002)

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Types of blogs featured

• News/political filters
• E.g., InstaPundit.com
• Academic/business knowledge logs
• E.g., as promoted by Dave Winer at Harvard
  Berkman Center

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An alternative claim

• Popular conception of blogs reflects an
  unrepresentative elite
• Foregrounds selected practices and marginalizes
  others
• Misrepresents nature of blogging
• along with its future trajectory

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Research study

• Blog Research on Genre project (BROG)
• Goal is to empirically characterize the typical
  blog
• A snapshot of the present as a benchmark for
  future comparison

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Data sample

• Core blogs (excl. LiveJournal, DiaryLand)
• Minimum 2 entries
• Definition
• Random sampling from blo.gs site
• Tracking 793,156 blogs as of 10/14/03
• Sources antville.org, blogger.com,
  pitas.com,weblogs.com
• Excluded non-English blogs blogs with no text in
  first entry blog software used for non-blog
  purpose blog not updated within two weeks
• 203 blogs collected and coded March-May 2003

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Methodology

• Web content analysis (Bates Lu, 1997 cf.
  Bauer, 2000)
• Web genre characteristics (Chandler, 1998 Dillon
  Gushrowski, 2000 cf. Yates Orlikowsky, 1992)
• Producer
• Purpose
• Structure
• Coded 44 features in each blog quantified results

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Hypotheses

• Blog content tends to be external to the author
  (news, strange-but-true phenomena,
  technical/scholarly information, etc.)
• Blog authors are typically well-educated adult
  males
• Blogs are interactive, attracting multiple
  comments from readers
• Blogs are heavily interlinked

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Findings Blog content
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Findings Blog authors
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Blog authors (cont.)

• Gender of blog author varies according to blog
  content
• Personal journals other 60 Female, 40 Male
• Filters, k-logs mixed 15 Female, 85 Male
• Age of blog author varies according to blog
  content
• Personal journals other 60 Teen, 40 Adult
• Filters, k-logs mixed 5 Teen, 95 Adult
• Many adult blog authors appear to be in their
  early 20s
• The second most frequent occupation is
  unemployed

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Findings Comments

• Percent of blogs allowing comments 43
• Related to default settings in blogging software
• Number of comments per newest entry
• mean .3
• mode 0
• range 0-6
• Number of comments per oldest entry
• mean .3
• mode 0
• range 0-7

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Findings Links

• Percent of blogs containing external links
  (excluding badges) 69.5
• Number of links per newest entry
• mean .65
• mode 0
• range 0-11
• Percent of newest entries that link to a news
  source 8.2
• Percent of newest entries that link to another
  blog 6.7

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Summary of findings

• Blog content is mostly personal (and often
  intimate)
• Blog authors are roughly equally split between
  male and female, adult and teen
• Adult males create more filters and k-logs
• Females and teens create more personal journals
• Most blog entries receive no comments
• Most blog entries contain no links

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Conclusion

• Blogs featured in contemporary public discourses
  about blogging are the exception, rather than the
  rule
• Represent elite demographics and practices
• The typical weblog is more personal,
  democratic less interactive and less intellectual

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How to interpret results?

• Possible sampling bias
• Small sample size
• English only
• Attraction of self-publication
• especially to non-elites
• Accessibility of blog creation software
• no HTML required
• Self-absorption
• especially for teens

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Future predictions

• Increasing mundane use
• AOL
• Increasing contentiousness
• The blogs of war (Cavanaugh, 2002)
• Increasing commercialization
• Ads on free software
• Fewer features on free sites
• Paid blog hosting services
• Business blogs
• Astro-turfing and spamming
• Increasing non-blog use of blog software

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Whats new about blogs?

• Ease of update means more interactive webpages
• Creators can be interactive yet maintain control
• Blurs distinction between traditional HTML
  documents and text-based CMC

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Weblogs on a continuum between standard Web pages
and CMC
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Conclusion

• Blogs may ultimately be transformative, but not
  in favoring a specific content, audience, or
  quality
• Rather, they create new affordances that will be
  open to a variety of uses (cf. email)
• Important to look at typical blogs as well as
  interesting/unusual ones
• Socio-political, social-psychological, and
  technical implications

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The End
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Contact us
herring, lscheidt, ellwrigh, sbonus_at_indiana.edu