Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
dailykos.com) to personal and life events (e.g. www.triplebranch.blogspot.com)
to consumer gadgets (e.g. gizmodo.com). Blogs often include images as well as
text and dynamically link to other blogs and sites on the Internet. By convention,
articles or posts are placed in reverse chronological order, that is, the most recent
is at the top. Also by convention, articles once posted, are not changed, though
errata may certainly be posted later.
As Torill Elvira Mortensen notes, “the literature on weblogs is somewhat
elusive, because the subject (weblogs), the academic publishing about weblogs,
and both the academic and popular discussions about weblogs take place, to an
extremely high extent, on the Internet” (in Coiro et al., 2008: 451). The prac-
tice of blogging itself is a “process of self-definition and a way of inscribing the
individual on the global Net” (ibid.).
The characteristic of blog sites is that it is very easy for the author to create
new content. So their usage is growing phenomenally. There are currently tens
of millions of blog sites world-wide and more than a million articles are posted
each day. Posting on a blog is less daunting to many people than writing a
paper; partly because there is no editor (or teacher) to critique it, so blogs are
often a way, particularly for young people, to exercise their literacy (Penrod,
2007). If there is a comment section to the blog, and if visitors to the blog use
it, then that is a way for the author to get feedback, but it feels more like peer
criticism than authoritarian criticism.
Blogs provide a significant amount of personal data. This is one of the rea-
sons researchers find them of interest. Blogs represent easily accessible quali-
tative data for a researcher. While not necessarily focused on a particular topic,
it can provide formidable data. It is important to note, however, that blogging
is beginning to be questioned
as a means of
surveillance (Staples, 2000). Users
place their personal data online, making these widely available to friend and
foe. Whether or not people will continue to blog truthfully, whether they will
reveal as much as they currently do, or whether it will evolve into a fictitious
genre remains to be seen. For researchers, it is important to be clear for what
purpose a blog is being used and in what ways the data might be misleading or
intentionally fictitious.
Blogs, for example, have become the bane of a journalist's world in that they
have made any 15-year-old child into new competition, providing a soap box
for any and all opinions (Mortensen in Coiro et al., 2008). Editors note that it
is difficult to remain on top of key stories, because blogs have enabled “neti-
zens” to scoop the biggest stories. In a similar fashion, many anticipate that
wikis will become the collaborative workspace of tomorrow, making them a
part of corporate life. As they become a routine work tool, they will evolve into
many other uses.
As a research tool, blogs represent qualitative data. They lend themselves to
narrative and content analysis techniques specifically. In most cases, cutting
and pasting is the easiest way to capture data for storage and analysis.
