In this session, we integrated the affinity diagram and the qualitative analysis of users’ posts to conclude the attractive characteristics of blogging experience. We built the affinity diagram after a contextual inquiry section of six informants has been interviewed with 282 notes from our informants. From the whole data collected and analyzed in the study, there were four main findings about users’ communication experience on their blogs: personal space, self-expression, life record, and social power. (See Figure 4.1) The qualitative analysis of posts included the content formats and the purposes of posts. There were three formats of post contents: only text, text with photos, and text with multimedia, like audio and movie clips. (See Figure 4.2) And the purposes of posts included recording life events, announcing recent situation, sharing life experience, gathering information, releasing emotional tensions, expressing opinions to influence others…and so on. (See Figure 4.3) We found out the early users, like User D, E, F, used various formats to share their life experiences. But User A, B, C blogged for announcing their recent situations and releasing emotional tensions. Then we could combine this information with affinity diagrams to get more understandings about the communication experience through blogging activities.
Figure 8 An affinity diagram of blogging experience (Please refer to Appendix C: quotes form contextual interviews, and Appendix D: affinity diagrams of blogging experience)
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
User A User B User C User D User E User F
Posts with only text Posts with text and photos
Posts with movie clips, sound audio
Figure 9 The three formats of post contents
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
User A User B User C User D User E User F
Record life events Announce recent situations Share experience Gather informations Release emotional tensions Express opinons to influence others Seek others' feedback
Figure 10 The purposes of users’ posts (More details about users’ quotes, please refer to Appendix E:
All our informants owned over-one kind of mobile products, such as notebook computers, camera phones, PDAs, or digital cameras. Half of our informants almost took these mobile devices along with them everyday. The blogging scenario happened when they took some photos or needed to take down some new ideas. They instantly found a coffee shop or on the spot, like the entrance of the metro station, turning on notebook to blogging. Owing to well- established wireless internet, people could connect to the mobile internet in the key area of Taipei, such as around universities and metro station.
Our focus in this study was specifically on the role of blog within users’ life. The components of communication taken place in blogs include blogger, reader, and the whole blogspace. Our informants considered that their real life had already, in part, shifted to the internet. And blog was an effective way to share what they saw and heard. At that time people could make social connection with strangers and make personal social life space possible. We found some communication characteristics of blogging experiences. These findings of our study are described in terms of four key issues: personal space, self-expression, life record, and social extension. In the sections that follow we consider each key finding in turn.
4.1 Personal Space
Our informants can efficiently use blogs to communicate with large or dispersed groups of people. Through this web-based media, they offer lots of information to reflect their personality, such as hobby, favorite songs, and recent life. They thought that blog is excellent platform to inform others and reflect part of their real life.
Blogs vary widely in nature and content. The content deals with formats as diverse as text, photos, sound audio and short film. People even decorate and customize their blogs, like their own room, to reflect their personality. Our informants chose the suitable template style for their taste, even designed the style by themselves. The overall style of their blogs can represent who they are silently. User A, a college student, said that “My blog is a personal space with my personality on the internet”. Blog has many functions, not only as a communicator but also as a signifier for identity.
In this study, we found that people need a space to share their life experience. One of our informants considered that publishing his life experience made it possible to exchange thoughts with other people. Not like writing a personal diary, there is no interaction with other person, because nobody could have the chance to read it. User C, a young man served as a soldier, said that “I used to write my diary in military, but now, I write it on the internet because I want my friends to take part in my life”. He usually wrote his blog at office hours in the morning and tended to make some topics raising readers’ enthusiastic discussions.
Readers can leave comments on a particular post. And readers’ comments are shown under the posts. The display of posts and comments makes bloggers easy to lively discuss or interact with readers. Bloggers actually expect for readers’ comments. Commentary means encouragement and support that readers give to bloggers. User B, an artist yearned for a notebook computer so that he could write down anything at anytime, said that “reader’s comments are the motive force makes me want to keep updating content. I will feel sorry for my audience if I don’t update my blog for a long time”. But part of our informants stated that sometimes they wanted themselves not to care about readers’ response too much. It is conflicting for bloggers to expect meaningful feedbacks but not to over mind these.
Some informants take blog as a personal space for friends and try to keep family and friends abreast of their life events. User B, who used blog in place of personal website, said that “it’s really like a place for my friends to have fun! My writing seems to be perused originally by them because strangers won’t be interested in my life. They even don’t care what happen to me”. User C echoed this statement: “I like to make a space let my good friends to have fun…sometimes I feel very boring in office hours, and I saw my friends leave some ridiculous comments on my blog.
That really rescues me from deep tedium”.
Although most bloggers take their blogs as a personal space, in fact, blogs are public not secret on the internet. It is frequently happened that strangers intrude in our informants’ blogs and bring about many embarrassments. User D, an early blog adopter in Taiwan, said that “I used to write anonymous-stories about my works. One day someone, who I don’t want to him to read that post, read it and made me in a predicament…It is annoying. After that, I put a bridle on my blog and
reduce the description of my personal fallings.” Facing these uncontrollable factors, bloggers attempt to protect their private real life and avoid some unnecessary disturbances.
Moreover, our informants may consider the content carefully before publishing the posts.
Sometimes bloggers think over who will read this and what attributes of my readers because they cared about readers’ perception. They either open up their posts to different reader groups according to the secrecy of post contents; or collect the posts with similar issues in one specific blog. User F who owned three blogs: one for French travel notes, one for private diary, and one for travel and living records. “Since I started other two blogs, I set my diary concealed. I don’t want my life over-exposed because I may be disturbed too much.” That proves why most of our informants generally own several blogs for different purposes.
We speculate that people expect to perform themselves on their own space. Because of blog’s easy creating and maintaining nature, people can create personal space and exclusive blogging style. Readers get to know bloggers based on their style, their idiosyncrasies, and their mannerisms. Bloggers’ posts tell a lot more about the person than what they look like can ever reveal. For this reason, within this style and private, personal space identity can be constructed and reconstructed. In order to disperse different kinds of readers and topics, bloggers usually create and maintain more than one blogspace.
4.2 Self-expression
Self-expression is about being able to say what you mean or want to say. It's about expressing oneself in words, music, painting, or any activity that allows your inner expression to come out.
Bloggers consider that blogging is a journey to scour for selfhood. It is also a process to know them again. Blogging help bloggers to know what kind of me in others’ mind and let others see different side of me. User D wanted to take promotion for the blogging activity in Taiwan as goal in her life. She thought blogging is a good way for self-expression. She said that “I summarized what happened today and annotated my feelings. Others can discover different sides of me on my blogs…Somehow blogging raised my self-confidence.”
Our informants shared their emotional feeling, live attitudes, and the enthusiasm about their interests with readers. Bloggers provide their life experience for readers as a reference. Readers can catch on something that bloggers highly take to heart by reading bloggers’ posts. Our informants intend to influence their readers by declaring themselves. For example, User E uses a camera phone to moblog his motor journey. As an enthusiastic motor sport fan in Taiwan, he wants his readers to pay more attentions to what they truly care about.
“At the initial stage, I try to write something interesting to attract people to browse this blog.
A blog talks about motorcycle issues. But, if you write these serious issues at the beginning, no one will be interested…maybe I just want to inspire my readers to take actions, make some efforts for this world or the domain they concerned about. That is really important to me.”
Our informants considered that blog was written for themselves. People always have some opinions to say, some ideas to share, some feelings to vent. Therefore people need an appropriate channel to let off steam. User A, used her blog to dump her feelings, said that “When something weighted on my mind, I usually wrote on my blog to let off steam.” In the same vein, blogging seems to self express with them. After grumbling, life will become more comfortable when people let off these negative emotions.
Self-expression is one of the strongest and most natural desire people all have. The natural desire to share experience with others and express who we are is one of the best ways to find peace of mind. From users’ quotes, we can feel that expression is healing when it comes with dealing with life. It also a way to influence readers because they can learn more about bloggers’
life experiences which can eventually teach them something new and maybe even helpful.
4.3 Life Record
It is human nature to collect what is meaningful to them in their life. New thoughts will be triggered when we experience the environment where we are living in, what happened to us, and who we met. Keeping a record of important life event is one way to do it. User B, a blogger who
But, maybe few minutes later we do forget!” To some of our informants, blogging is partially similar to write a hand-writing diary or trivial notes.
Our informants used blogs to record activities and events in their lives. They expect their thoughts at every moment could be kept as a part of daily diary, or proofs of real life and been recorded immediately. Not only describe what happened but also personal emotional feelings.
User F, maintained three blogs simultaneously, log her travel and gourmandize experience on her blogs. She installed the wireless AP in her house and office so that she and her families could get internet access anywhere, even on the toilet. She said this sentiment on this matter. “All I want is record. I am a nostalgic creature and dying for preserving all stuffs and lovely memories…and most important is my feelings. I share not only content but also my attitude about this world.
Everything is worthy to expect. Hope is the most important thing I want to spread out”.
User A started her blog to “record momentous circumstance”. She echoed User F’s statement:
“I do record when something really momentous happen or make me feel flushed…such as preparing for oral examination of research institute, or I got a new school number…these things means a lot to me! …the trigger behind blogging is similar to writing a personal diary. I just want to keep everything all the time to remind me of those experiences I once had”.
Due to the improvement of technology, our informants blogged to record activities and events in their lives even when they were on the move. User E always carried digital camera and notebook computer when he went out. “…the key area with wireless or broadband internet, like office, home, coffee shop, Taipei metro station[blogging scene]…When something came out of my mind or I took an excellent photo, I am unable to hold myself blogging immediately, no matter rain or shine.“ Bloggers can experience the different tempo of blogging in various contexts. User E said, “…I put myself on the scene to experience the cadence of blogging. The tempos of blogging will become fast in the metro station; in opposition, the tempos will slow down when I am on a quite and steady scene, like home.”
In addition, in our sample, we found that our informants nearly preferred using image than text.
They deemed that image could express personal emotional feelings more directly. User A said that “my photos can tell stories…there should be many possibilities to keep track of my feelings with different kinds of format”. It is important to most people that they can gather life events
because they can have a nice overview of every precious moment. Even bustling with people in everyday life, there are many moments that people don’t want to miss it. The easy-to-use convenience of blog services made user willing to maintain their blog actively. To better preserve the event data, besides texts and photos, other types of data formats should also be provided.
4.4 Social Extension
It was found that our informants’ social intercourses extend in two extreme directions, owing to the widespread use of blogs. One is that bloggers and readers are friends in real life and they just keep in touch and maintain their relationship through blogs. Once they meet a new friend in real life and they will offer him/her to access their online space. (See Figure 11a) To quote User C,”I make lots of friends after keeping a stall. Each time people come to my stall, I will take many photos and put them on line. These friends come up and leave several messages, sometimes they start to discuss some funny things happened in my stall…and my place become bustling! Let me feel that - my life is so rich!” Bloggers imperceptibly but inexorably perceive readers’
concern. And readers’ attention arouse bloggers’ motive force to continue blogging.
Figure 11 Two directions of social extensions.
The other is bloggers know readers only through the Internet. Their relationship in later case is gradually accumulated via interactions on each other’s blog. The virtual relationship will
Friends’
Real Life Users’
Real Life
User’s Blog
Users’
Real Life
Others’
Real Life
User’s Blog Other’s Blog
(b) (a)
understand me deeply through reading my articles…when we meet face to face, they think I just like the way I write”, she said. Blogs are kind of a continual tour, with an author guide who readers get to know. Blogging opens another vision of bloggers’ social world and pull someone whose personality similar to bloggers into their social network.
Communication technologies allow users to get acquainted with someone impossible to know.
“…blogging let me have opportunities to know someone who I never know before and the new relationships between us become a lifelong friendship. That’s amazing! “, User E said, “A Finlander searched keyword “Taiwan Blogger” on internet. Later he found me and email to me ask for tour guide. Of course, he did fly to Taiwan!” Communication through blog can develop new life experience and extend social interaction into other forms of communication. The social relationship between bloggers and readers will be reinforced when coming face to face.
People sometimes have their heart filled with the hope of reaching out to new people in the ever-expanding blogosphere. They established blogs as social activity, a form of social communication in which bloggers and readers were intimately related through the writing and reading of the blogs. “I came here for afternoon tea time today. I relay think the environment is pretty nice, and drink taste well…there is no cheap and high quality coffee shops in Taipei. I really feel well so I write on blog. But since the boss knew I reported them on my blog, they will give me a special discount every time… I don’t know how come but it’s wonderful. Eventually, we became friends in our real life.” said by User F. ”See, this is cake card sent by one of my friends [reader]…I also send something back to her when I go to Taidong. We have some interaction with each other in real life.” Another view point of User D is “blogging helps me to connect different friends circle and enable large acquaintance with each others.”
Our informants used to check out new posts everyday when they connected to internet. This is a way to update each other’s recent lives. User A said this sentiment on this matter. “Some bloggers live abroad, like him [show someone’s blog]. He is a designer in Japan and was awarded the second prize…It is cheerful to read someone’s life experience at the same time but he is in a distant place.” People can overcome space-time barrier to know someone far away.
Blogging increases the chances of interactions with others they may or may not know as well as provides another convention to grasp one’s thinking
4.5 Summary of Findings
Developments in mobile communication technologies have increased the opportunities and means with certain social activities that allow people to blur the boundaries once imposed by time and place, such as the blogging activity. Not only are people technologically connected through mobile telephony, multiple aspects of their lives can be connected or bridged through social connections.
We observed the existed blogging activities and found four communication requirements form users’ current experiences: personal space, self-expression, life record, and social extension.
Blog has many functions, not only as a communicator but also as a signifier for identity. Users expect for a personal space to perform who they are for the moment. For example, users can decorate their blogs with various visual layouts that fit in with their personal characteristics, even
Blog has many functions, not only as a communicator but also as a signifier for identity. Users expect for a personal space to perform who they are for the moment. For example, users can decorate their blogs with various visual layouts that fit in with their personal characteristics, even