![Page 1: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging
Lead Researcher:Eric Baumer
School of Information and Computer SciencesDepartment of Informatics
Co-Researcher/Presenter:Mark Sueyoshi
SURF-IT Fellow
Faculty Advisor:Bill Tomlinson
School of Information and Computer Sciences
Department of Informatics
University of California, Irvine (UCI)Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Information Technology (SURF-IT)Thursday, August 30, 2007
![Page 2: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
July, 2002 Mar, 2003 Feb, 2004 Nov, 2004 July, 2006
Percent of Internet users
Blog Creators Blog Readers
Focusing on the Rising NumbersGrowth of the Blogosphere
Data from Pew Internet & American Life Project, “The State of Blogging”, Jan. 2005; “Bloggers”, July 2006
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
July, 2002 Mar, 2003 Feb, 2004 Nov, 2004 July, 2006
Percent of Internet users
Blog Creators Blog Readers
Growth of the Blogosphere
57 Million
12 Million
August, 2007
![Page 3: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
Previous Work on Blogs
• Fairly recent topic for study
• Lenhart: Slow norm development
• Nardi: Social nature of blogging
• boyd: Need for self-awareness tools
• The neglected reader
![Page 4: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
Why Blog Readers?
• Blogging is a social activity
• Readers contribute and shape blogs
• Specific Foci - Ways blog readers contribute
• Comments
• Reading
• Interaction beyond the blog
![Page 5: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
A Different Approach
• Reader-response theory (e.g. Stanley Fish, C.S. Lewis, Norman Holland
• Arose in the 1960’s and 1970’s
• Reader creates meaning
• Author creates potential for construction of that meaning
![Page 6: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Methods
• Ethnographic Study
• Recruitment
• Result of Recruitment
• Two Interviews, semi-structured
• First - exploratory
• Second - focused
• Blog Logging
![Page 7: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Findings and Results:Common Blog Reading
Practices
• Habitual
• Pottering
• Information overload?
• Non-chronous
• Order matters, not time(stamps)
I don’t know if I look forward to [reading blogs]…I don’t really look forward to cigarettes anymore, but it’s something that happens through the course of the day that I feel like I might need to do. It just becomes habit, I guess. -Charles
![Page 8: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Findings and Results: Other Blog Reading
Practices
• “It Depends”
• Motivations
• Relationship
• Perceptions of blogs
• blog website versus non-blog website.
![Page 9: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
has like personal opinions that’s…more of like a journal, I think, of things going on in that person’s life. Like a regular website…it could be anything I guess.
Patricia: A blog is something that’s still going on, that still has a conversation going on, that has people commenting, [it] doesn’t have to be all the time, but it does have this dialogue between the person who’s posting and the people who are reading, yeah that’s a blog.Interviewer: So when the conversation stops does it stop being a blog?Patricia: By my definition, yeah it’s a dead site.
What is a Blog?
• Formal Definition:
• “A web page that is frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological order” (Herring et al.)
• Participant definitions• “newspaper”, “diary”, & “journal”
• Nebulous
![Page 10: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
Obligations from the Perspective of the Blog
Reader• Obligations of Bloggers
• Frequent updates, aesthetically pleasing, navigable
• Obligations of Readers
• Comments, indication of readership
• Obligations change depending on context - Reader Response
• Useful to focus on the ways readers read blogs rather than the structure of blogs
• Popular blog versus blogs of friends
![Page 11: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Becoming a Regular Reader
• Reading for Information
• Reading for the Blogger
• Reading for the Information and staying for the blogger
• Dynamic interaction across time
“At first, when he was posting pictures about his cat, not that I thought it was a little nutty, but it was like, ‘what’s the sense in doing this?’, but then I would read the entries and they would be really cute or hilarious pictures so then I became even a fan of the cat postings then I was like, ‘oh my god… this is so petty’…. he’s a charismatic person so pretty much any topic you’ll get some sort of satisfaction or chuckle out of some.”
![Page 12: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
Research Implications
• Salient themes concerning blog readers
• Offline/online
• Proper interaction
• Heterogeneity of blog readers
• Demographics and dissimilarities
![Page 13: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
Design Implications
• Tools self-awareness
• Aware of the ‘why’, not particularly the ‘how’
• “5 minutes turns into 50”
• “it’s like checking your email”
![Page 14: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
Future Research
• Integrative
• Bloggers as well as blog readers
• Longitudinal
• Interactions in relation to time
![Page 15: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
Conclusion
• Blog readers are significant in the construction construction of meaning in the activity of blogging.
• Blog readers experience and interact with blogs differently depending on motivations, perceptions, content of blog, personal relationships.
• Blogs are far more heterogeneous than previous research has suggested
![Page 16: Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department of Informatics](https://reader033.vdocuments.us/reader033/viewer/2022051516/56649d235503460f949f9bce/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
Acknowledgments
Calit2
SURF-IT
Social Code Group