Research background

Blogs, or weblogs, have been experiencing a rapid growth rate in recent years. According to Technorati (2009, 2008), the number of blogs doubled to 133 million between 2007 and 2008.

A blog is a website comprising blog posts, or content written by the blogger, which is typically organized into categories and sorted in reverse chronological order (Wright 2006).

Most of the blogs are similar to personal diaries, or are corporate marketing channels for engaging existing as well as potential customers. Because of their easy creation, blog pages have become the web-authoring tool for the novice, as well as the expert. Blogs create a context for dialogues between bloggers and readers. Through blogger-initiated conversations, blog platforms build a solid base of shared experiences and mutual relationships (Bausch et al.

2002).

Blogs are defined as “frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence” (Herring et al. 2005), and they could be considered a form of web-based information technology (Du and Wagner 2006). Blogs have some distinctive and attracting characteristics. First, blogs are usually managed by one author only, but many readers can leave a comment on posted entries and authors can answer it with another comment or by posting a subsequent or revised entry (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). In other words, blogs are dynamic and are developed to facilitate and accommodate frequent changes in content, particularly by giving many readers the opportunity to comment on the primary messages that appear on them (Kim 2005). Besides, based on the previous researches, media have been conceptualized as transmission conduits (Axley 1984) or channels (Fisher 1978) through which information can be conveyed. Therefore, the blog could be considered as a form of media, making fully two-way online communication possible (Wright 2006, Kaplan

and Haenlein 2010). Second, the creator of the message prepares the content without having to be familiar with special coding and uploads the message to blogs just by clicking on the

“Publish” button. Therefore, blogs can be considered as easy to use communication media in web-based information technology. Blogs made it feasible for the communication process to be much larger, less technical, with a higher number of users.

In the previous few years, blogs have been adopted by users for several applications in domains such as journalism (Hall and Bavison 2007), business (Tikkanen et al. 2009), and education (Chang et al. 2008). For example, teachers use blogs as a tool for encouraging interaction between students to facilitate learning (Chang et al. 2008). Corporate established blogs act as marketing channels for engaging existing and potential customers (Tikkanen et al.

2009). Blogs have become popular social media for facilitating interaction in a variety of specific fields.

Blog use in educational sectors has grown extensively and considerable research has focused on the educational use of blogs (Oravec 2002, Williams & Jacobs 2004, Richardson 2006; Dailey 2006, Churchill 2009, Kerawalla et al. 2009, Yang 2009). Although blogs did not originate in education sectors, they have become useful in various educational levels and settings, and as an authoring tool. For example, blogs often serve as a digital portfolio of student assignments and achievements (Liu & Chang 2010). Most blog platforms provide a personal writing space, which is easy to publish, sharable, and automatically archived, empowering users to form learning communities through inter-linkages. Therefore, blogs can combine solitary reflection and peer interaction in learning processes (Richardson 2006, Yang 2009). Furthermore, classroom discussion is often teacher-student centered, rather than a student-student dialog. The blog is a vehicle to ensure that everyone has a voice and is a valued member of the learning community. The instructor has previously been the only person to access student work. Students turn in their work to instructors and have no way to learn

how their peers scored on the same assignments, thereby losing the potential of appreciating student work. In contrast, peer learning is a form of cooperative learning that enhances the value of student-student interaction. Students using interactive blogs can read peer postings and leave comments, which enable them to learn from peers by creating dialogues with each other (Kay 2006). Therefore, blogs may have the potential to transform personal learning to collaborative learning.

Why do we blog? Blogs can be considered as easy to use communication media in web-based information technology. Blogs made it feasible for the communication process to be much larger, less technical, with a higher number of users. Moreover, what blog applications can do for us? Blogs have been adopted by users for several applications in domains such as journalism, business, and education. Many blog applications have been change our life.

This thesis tried to investigate why people accept blogs, how people use blogs, and what application people do on blogs. This thesis would conduct a field study to explore blog acceptance and usage behaviors, and furthermore take an experimental study to assess the effects of interactive blogging in higher education. The first study would incorporate the technology acceptance model with media choice factors to explain and predict the blog acceptance behaviors. The second study would explore the use of blogs in education setting, and how student attitudes towards online peer interaction and peer learning, as well as motivation to learn from peers, may differ when using the blog comments feature, and when students are encouraged to read and comment on each other’s work.