Week 3: Blog on Blogs
This week I will be looking at the ways in which using online blogs have become so pervasive in contemporary online networks, while considering the potential benefits, pitfalls and limitations of blogs and their usefulness as sociological research tools.
The blog example I looked at was the F word (http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/) which is part of a website dedicated to contemporary feminist issues in the UK. Currently, the F word has published blogs on women's economic position, the impact of eating disorders, issues that affect LGBT women, and the role of women in technology. I think the F word blog is very accessible and is easy to understand and navigate. I think that this blog is particularly effective as it samples different demographics of women within the feminist movement, which in turn creates a blog that is varied in its content and attractive to readers who identify with a variety of current and contemporary themes and topics. The F word blog offers a clear and concise layout that is easy to use and discover theme specific blogs. Along with a accessible language and syntax, the blog utilizes photos and videos in order to support textual themes that are easy to read and understand.
In order to understand the current status of blogs as a communication tool, some attention must be given to the reasons why the popularity of blogs has proliferated in recent years, the potential benefits of blogs and the limitations and ethical considerations that must be considered when accessing blogs as a research tool. In terms of using blog content as a sociological research tool, the online blog can provide a number of benefits that other types of data may not. Blogs are beneficial in the sense that they provide low-cost data that is publicly available, instantaneous and are substantial in their amount and variety (Hookway 2008:92).
Blogs appear to dominate much of cyberspace, and appear to be increasingly popular as a tool for academic and non-academic writers, who use blogs to consider a variety of different topics and themes. In recent years there have been many attempts to suggest the number of blogs online, with estimates suggesting there are between 2.8 million and 100 million blogs globally (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education 2006; Riley 2005).
A potential concern when using blogs in sociological research is the ethical concern of the public-private divide. Blogs appear in the public sphere online but due to the private nature of the content, many are written in a personal and reflective manner. Blogs appear to sit uneasily in the public-private framework, and are therefore difficult to locate as either predominantly public or private. In this respect blogs may be seen to mediate the private-public divide. Altman agrees that privacy is a dynamic concept that is changeable, and is therefore not a fixed concept but one that is based upon a balance of competing needs (Altman 1975). I would agree with Altman in respect of blogs and privacy, as at different times, people have different needs such as to be alone or to make contact with others. In this sense, the blog is an excellent tool for bridging the private-public divide at times when the authors of the blogs desire contact with others in the public sphere.
Regarding the privacy of blogs there are three ways of explaining the delineation of the public-private divide in cyberspace. The first assertion argues that because online material is freely available consent is not required, the second assertion argues that although blogs are available publicly they are written in a private manner and should be treated as such, and the final assertion considers content on the internet as neither public or private (Hookway 2008:105).
Another concern when considering blogs is the amount of credibility given to the content of blogs, and whether they should be considered as truthful and accurate accounts of events, or should be considered as part-fictionalized or contested sources of information. According to Metzger 'credibility...is a receiver-based judgment that involves both...objective assessments of information quality and accuracy and.....subjective judgments of a source’s trustworthiness and expertise (Metzger 2007). Therefore a blogs credibility is somewhat decided by the audience that is reading and interacting (leaving comments) with the blogs themes, and is therefore dependent on how readers of the blog come to formulate the decision to 'trust' the blogs content. Moreover it may be argued that academic research tools such as the use of diaries and questionnaires may also be problematic when considering the credibility of the content, as they too are open to contest and claims of incredibility, much in the same way that blogs are open to debate.
In conclusion, it is apparent that online blogs, much as diaries have been used in the past as a mode of textual data, are likely to become more prevalent in society as the use and development of technology and the internet continues to become situated as 'the everyday' in contemporary social cultures. The use of blogs in sociological research is also likely to continue to be an area of development, yet this raises questions around the public-private divide, and other ethical concerns. Such concerns highlight the questionable credibility of blog content, issues around the protection of young and vulnerable internet users and the difficulties and appropriateness of gaining consent to use other individuals thoughts, feelings and ideologies that appear in private form as blog entries.
