Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging Lead Researcher: Eric Baumer School of Information and Computer Sciences Department 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

Focusing on the Rising Numbers Growth of the Blogosphere Data from Pew Internet & American Life Project, “The State of Blogging”, Jan. 2005; “Bloggers”, July 2006 Growth of the Blogosphere 57 Million 12 Million August, 2007

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

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

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

Methods Ethnographic Study Recruitment Result of Recruitment Two Interviews, semi-structured First - exploratory Second - focused Blog Logging

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

Findings and Results: Other Blog Reading Practices “It Depends” Motivations Relationship Perceptions of blogs blog website versus non-blog website.

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

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

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.”

Research Implications Salient themes concerning blog readers Offline/online Proper interaction Heterogeneity of blog readers Demographics and dissimilarities

Design Implications Tools self-awareness Aware of the ‘why’, not particularly the ‘how’ “5 minutes turns into 50” “it’s like checking your ”

Future Research Integrative Bloggers as well as blog readers Longitudinal Interactions in relation to time

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

Acknowledgments Calit 2 SURF-IT Social Code Group