Jenna Andersen's List: Female Bloggers Secondary Sources

• • 473

  • most bloggers actually use blogs for individualistic expression and communication
• • 473

  • Blogs are personal journals on the internet arranged in reverse chronological sequence that facilitate interactive computer mediated communication through text, images, and audio/video objects
• • 474

  • Krishnamurthy (2002) proposes to classify blogs into four types by two dimensions of a blog's orientation: personal versus topical and community versus individual. 
• • 474

  •  Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, and Swartz (2004) are the first to investigate the issue in depth. Through ethnographic interviews, Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, and Swartz (2004) came to the conclusion that there are five blogging motivations: "to document their life experiences, to provide commentary and opinions, to express deeply felt emotions, to articulate ideas through writing, and to form and maintain community forums."
• • 475

  • blogging also relates to social embeddedness in the sense that the creation and consumption of content are embedded in social interaction.
• • 477

  • In this light, bloggers who have the motivation to express themselves through texts and multimedia content they create may not only blog for creation or expression sake, but are also likely to express themselves to obtain an identity for various social interaction activities. In other words, bloggers with self-expression motivation are not just motivated to express themselves through blogging, but would also like to receive feedback from others about themselves.
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    • In this light, bloggers who have the motivation to express themselves through texts and multimedia content they create may not only blog for creation or expression sake, but are also likely to express themselves to obtain an identity for various social interaction activities. In other words, bloggers with the self-expression motivation are not just motivated to express themselves through blogging, but would also like to receive feedback from others about themselves. 
• • 477

  • For bloggers who blog to document their lives, the textual or multimedia records kept on their own blogs are one way to communicate with family and friends, to enrich the ongoing conversations those bloggers are interested in, and to establish an identity in the virtual communities they join.

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• • 1657

  •  It is estimated that over 70% of blogs are personal journals
• • 1658

  • Much research has shown that personal journal bloggers disclose large amounts of intimate information in their blogs
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  • The free flow of self-disclosure in the blogosphere has also led to a social dialogue surrounding the potential ramifications of such somewhat deviant behavior. Although many bloggers recognize the risks associated with their self-disclosure, relatively few bloggers actually restrict their blogs’ access 
• • 1658

  • More women than men maintain personal journal blogs ( [Herring et al., 2005], [Lenhart and Madden, 2005] and [Wei, 2009]), and women are more likely to be inspired to post by personal experiences ( [Lenhart and Fox, 2006] and [Pedersen and Macaffee, 2007]), which may lead to greater self-disclosure.
• • 1658

  • Younger people tend to be more disclosive than older people in face-to-face relationships
• • 1659

  • One tricky notion to consider is the possibility that bloggers may be writing for more than one audience at a time. For example, teenage girls in Bortree’s (2005) ethnography wrote primarily for their close friends, but they simultaneously recognized that strangers may be reading their blog posts as well. These complex dynamics are indicative of such masspersonal communication, or communicating interpersonally to a mass audience
• • 1659

  • Few studies have presented typologies of motives for blogging on personal journals. However, there are many motives that have emerged from this research. Several of the motives regard sharing or revealing information. Sharing emotions, opinions (Nardi et al., 2004), personal experiences, creativity (Lenhart & Fox, 2006), and information or knowledge ( [Chung and Kim, 2008], [Lee et al., 2008] and [Lenhart and Fox, 2006]) are reasons why people maintain personal journal blogs. There are also motives related to documenting or archiving life’s details ( [Hollenbaugh, in press], [Lee et al., 2008], [Lenhart and Fox, 2006] and [Nardi et al., 2004]) and articulating one’s ideas (Nardi et al., 2004). Some blog to affect others, whether influencing, motivating, or entertaining their audiences (Lenhart & Fox, 2006). Some bloggers write to earn an income (Lenhart & Fox, 2006), and others to spark a discussion among a network of readers ( [Lenhart and Fox, 2006] and [Nardi et al., 2004]). Another common motive for hosting a personal journal blog is to manage and support existing relationships ( [Lee et al., 2008] and [Stefanone and Jang, 2007]).

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• • 171

  •  it examined three psychological needs that women might not consciously realize spur them to blog: needs for self-disclosure, affiliation, and achievement.
• • 172

  •  by 2009, 8 million American women were blogging
• • 172

  • Earlier studies have found women write personal blogs for many of the same reasons they seek social outlets offline: to seek others’ opinions, express emotions, and release tension
• • 172

  • Women blog to express deeply held emotions, articulate ideas, form and maintain community forums, provide commentary, and document their lives 
• • 172

  • Women also have been found to be more likely to blog to pass the time and write about internal topics, such as hobbies, friends and relatives, and personal experiences, while men see blogging as a more instrumental activity and are more attuned to covering external topics, such as science and technology
• • 173

  •  I propose that the higher a woman’s need to self-disclose, the more likely she will be to see blogging as way to express her own voice, versus a way to form connections with other people online or to have power and influence in the blogosphere.
• • 173

  • Blogging is particularly suitable for expressing voice because bloggers have been found to see blogging as a way to express themselves creatively and share experiences (Lenhart & Fox, 2006). The ability to speak out is particularly important for women. As Herring et al. (1998) explain, men tend to talk more in public settings than women, and people who talk more publicly are considered to have more status, power, and influence.
• • 173

  • For women bloggers, a positive relationship exists between a need for self-disclosure and seeing blogging as a means to express one’s own voice, mediated by time spent blogging and need for affiliation.
• • 177

  • First, it extends the literature by establishing that blogging to express oneself is not the goal for all women bloggers – but only for those driven to blog to fill a need to self-disclose. 

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• • 729

  • The most popular mommy blogs can attract more than 50,000 hits per day and collect 
    hundreds of comments per entry
• • 731

  • Motherhood is seen as part of 
    the private or domestic sphere that women are supposed to occupy and not 
    challenge. The public sphere – a place that men inhabit and women desire to 
    belong to – consists of the working world, politics, economics, the law and 
    mainstream discourse (Motiejunaite, 2005).
• • 731

  • As 
    motherhood is commonly viewed  as belonging squarely within the private 
    sphere and successful, strong men do not air their dirty laundry in public, 
    so to speak, mommy bloggers did not fit into this equation and were thus 
    criticized for their transgression.
• • 732

  • Mommy 
    bloggers are creating a different picture of motherhood to what we see in the 
    mainstream media. Instead of the vision of the loving mother, we see women 
    who are frazzled by the demands of their newborn baby, who have no clue 
    what to do when their child gets sick, who suffer from postpartum depression 
    and whose hormones rage uncontrollably.
• • 734

  • Fans of blogs check for updates on a weekly or even daily basis, hoping to 
    hear more from their favorite commentators. A
• • 734

  • The content of a blog is 
    entirely up to the writer and often spans a wide range of topics within a single 
    blog.
• • 734

  • . Studies into the reasons why people blog have found that 
    individuals have a desire to document their own life, express their opinions, 
    have an outlet for catharsis, inspire their own creative juices and participate in 
    a community forum
• • 734

  • , for the most part,  
    women categorized as ‘mommy bloggers’ are simply women who are 
    mothers and occasionally write about their own children. The language 
    used in such blogs is extremely informal and usually narrative, and the most 
    popular writers employ a great deal of humor and levity to entertain their 
    audience. The readers of such blogs feel a tremendous closeness and loyalty 
    to the blog’s author, as if they are reading the words of a close friend instead 
    of stranger
• • 734

  • So-called ‘mommies’ also write about popular culture, 
    food, current events, politics, their town, the weather, financial issues, their 
    husband and any other possible topic
• • 735

  • Another way to examine this discrepancy is to look at the history of 
    women’s diaries and journals, as the modern phenomenon of blogging can 
    be seen as an extension of women’s earlier forms of narrativizing personal 
    experience. This is a particularly apt comparison, given that blogs can be 
    seen as a remediation of the diary or journal into an internet form, and that 
    there are many formal elements of the two media which can be compared. 
    However, it is also an important comparison because of the many similarities 
    between female bloggers and female diarists or autobiographers in the 
    way that they have been treated in the academy
• • 737

  • The underlying feeling seemed to be that the name ‘mommy 
    blogger’ was inherently belittling and cast their website in an unfavorable 
    light
• • 738

  • The 
    self that emerges from a blog is neither cohesive nor singular, but instead 
    determined through an amalgamation of conflicting elements.
    One of the easiest ways to view the fragmentation of identity represented 
    in blogs is through the ‘tags’ given to entries. . It is telling that the list of tags on most mommy blogs includes 
    a vast range of subjects outside of parenting, and that plenty of entries have 
    nothing to do with parenting at all.
• • 740

  • Women always have been hailed by advertisers because 
    of their spending habits, and mothers serve as particularly good consumers 
    because they also make purchases on behalf of their entire family
• • 740

  • As yet, mommy bloggers have not come together to tackle social justice 
    or political issues such as parental leave, the cost of daycare and healthcare, 
    workplace equity or any other issues that might benefit from their grass roots 
    mobilization and community organizing.
• • 742

  • As one blogger stated, there are ‘three things I love about 
    blogging: the sense of community, the connection with other people, and the 
    chance to tell my stories to a receptive audience’ 
• • 742

  • when participating in blogrolling
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    and commenting on one another’s posts, women are validating each other, 
    displaying active listening and defining their own communities
• • 743

  • Mommy bloggers are developing their own voice for discussing 
    motherhood, and it is distinctly different from the radiant image of the 
    good mother that has dominated our media, with its impossible demands 
    and assumptions about women. Women who blog about their children 
    are transforming their personal narratives of struggle and challenge into 
    interactive conversations with other mothers, and in so doing, are beginning 
    to expand our notion of motherhood, women bloggers and the mother’s 
    place within the public sphere. 
• • 744

  • The uniquely fragmented format of blogs has the potential to capture this 
    multifaceted portrait and underscore the everyday repetition of the role of 
    the mother in a way that no other medium has been able to accomplish thus 
    far.
• • 744

  • Instead of writing for 
    one’s own satisfaction and record-keeping, bloggers deliberately craft their 
    narratives so that others can recognize their similarities and shared interests.

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• • 24

  • Something about the online journal and its generic cousin the Weblog, or blog, makes me distinctly uncomfortable. After several hours of reading these journals, I often feel sick, as if I've watched too many tell-all talk shows on daytime television. I've learned too much I didn't need to know about too many people's everyday lives-lives without anything particularly extraordinary to recommend them, except the diarists' own sense of importance and relevance.
• • 24

  • Certainly, literary and aesthetic snobbery informs my dismay at many online diaries. They have not been properly "vetted," properly shaped for a reading audience, before being made public. 
• • 26

  •  Web diaries' public nature but private-that is, personal, often intimate-content confounds traditional distinctions between public and private writings and functions.
• • 31

  • Both diaries, as these entries illustrate, abound with particular social, cultural, even geographical references that a reader may or may not understand. My sense of alienation, then, underscores the fact that I am not the imagined audience for these texts; I don't necessarily share the diarists' values or the knowledge so foundational to membership in their communities. Consequently, I felt as if I was an eavesdropper on this conversation, not a welcomed participant. 
• • 31

  • hese links act as community builders by constructing a virtual world for the diarist, peopling her autobiographical landscape with the friends and family, restaurants, shops, and schools that the diarist invokes, or the movies, music groups, or causes about which she is passionate. By following the links, readers can in a sense share the diarist's experiences, see as he or she does, rather than relying on the diarist's textual descriptions, and thus these links foster a greater sense of intimacy between writer and audience. They also, arguably, add to the reader's sense of the diary's "authenticity," because the narrative is anchored in "actual" places and people that members of the audience may also recognize, making them feel part of the narrative, as "insiders" who are part of the community the diarist addresses.
• • 32

  • Many diarists design their sites to continuously accommodate new readers, including a jump-button that links to the first entry, and pages such as "About me," "FAQ," "Cast," or "First time?" that provide first-timers with the background to the diarists' stories.
• • 35

  •  After admitting in April 1998 that he had not written online about the breakup of his long-term relationship, Schalchlin received an angry email from a reader: "i began to really question whether you had really been honest in the diary all along . . . and i quit reading your diary except to catch up once a month or so. . . . i began wondering if all the things you'd written about all along were not-as-they-seemed" (14 Apr. 1998). By inviting readers into his personal, or "private," life, Schalchlin sets up reader expectations not just of honesty but of total exposure. 

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