Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
information site, “bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs,
creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation.”
Their service tracks these links, indexing tens of thousands of updates every
hour. According to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs every
day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts
per day, or over 18 updates a second.
In addition to management tools, there are a number of search engines. One
of the better search services is IceRocket (www.icerocket.com). It has a variety
of criteria by which to search and various means by which to list a blog.
Blogarama (http://www.blogarama.com/) lists over 82,000 sites to date, orga-
nized by subject heading, which points to another type of service. Some ser-
vices are helpful for organizational purposes, enabling a user to track blogs and
their usage. One such service is del.icio.us, enabling users to organize and man-
age websites, blogs, and so forth, in a bookmark fashion similar to the way in
which people are used to managing websites in a web browser.
In addition to capturing, organizing and analyzing data in existing blogs, a
researcher could choose to create a blog. In the interactive environment of a blog,
a researcher could manage a type of focus group by raising questions and chal-
lenging participants by responding to submissions. (Again, note the exchange in
the example). Much like other electronic focus groups, this form of research pre-
sents challenges for focus group moderators (Gaiser, 1997). For example, it would
be difficult in a blog setting for the moderator to have much control over the dis-
cussion, making it difficult to keep people on a particular task or discussion
thread. Some researchers may be concerned about researcher bias, with so much
authored information being the beginning of a discussion thread. The blog could
present a kind of double-edged sword. Without substantial initial enticement to
engage, participants may provide little follow-up, limiting the benefit of the blog
environmentfordatacollection.Ontheotherhand,toomuchresearcherinvolve-
ment up front raises the issues of research bias. Lori Kendall notes, however, that
“participant observation allows researchers to gain a better understanding of par-
ticipants' ranges of identity performances and the meaning those performances
have for them,” suggesting that concern about researcher bias through participa-
tion in the study may be unfounded in online research (1999: 71). Regardless of
any moderator challenges, however, researchers should not be deterred from
attempting actively to capture the rich data accessible in a blog environment.
As with other internet technologies, blogs may be hosted on a personal web
server or one belonging to your institution. This requires a working and acces-
sible web server and blog management software, such as WordPress (word-
press.com), TypePad (www.typepad.com) or Moveable Type (www.moveable
type.org). Blogs may also be hosted on a blog service, possibly using one of these
samesoftwaremanagementsystems.Someofthebiggestfree(meaningadvertiser-
supported) hosted sites are Blogger (www.blogger.com) and Blogsome
(www.blogsome.com). The social networking sites MySpace and Facebook also
provide blogging facilities.
