Blogs and Blogging

Blogs, a shortened form of the term Weblogs, are frequently updated personal Websites where content (text, pictures, music, videos, and so forth) is posted on a regular basis and displayed in chronological order. Blogs typically allow readers to comment on posts; such interactive blogs hold the potential to facilitate the development of interpersonal relationships and a sense of community among bloggers and their readers. More than 12 million Americans report blogging, with men and women blogging in approximately equal numbers. Blog authors express their gender through both visual and discursive means, as they communicate their ideas and form relationships with like-minded individuals who read and post on their blogs.

Blogs display a combination of three characteristics unique across online venues: First, blogs display frequent, short posts. Regular contact between bloggers and readers can build close relationships and create a strong online identity by reinforcing identity portrayals. Second, blog posts blend mass and interpersonal communication in that they are written for a mass audience but promote one-on-one relationships between blog interactants. Bloggers write to a mixed audience that may include family, friends, and strangers. Readers become increasingly familiar and friendly with bloggers after reading their posts regularly and responding with their posted comments. Third, blogs tend to be highly interconnected via the “blogroll,” a list of links that allows the user to add others' blogs to their list of recommended reading, creating a network of blogs sometimes called the “blogosphere.” Blogrolls often feature reciprocal listings as bloggers tend to add one another's blogs to their blogrolls, when they approve of the blog. For example, many feminist blogs are interconnected via their blogrolls.