Blogging Together : Digital Expression in a Real-Life Community

The paper presents the results of a qualitative study of blogging in a real-life community in which we aimed to understand the process by which an individual becomes involved in this practice. We conducted open-ended interviews with members of a university research center, discussing their experiences and habits reading blogs or maintaining their own. Our sample contained seasoned bloggers, recent ones, active blog readers who didn’t blog themselves, “drop-outs,” one subject who was contemplating starting to blog, as well as members of the community who neither maintained nor read blogs. Our findings highlight the connections between online and offline interactions, showing how involvement in blogging is dependent on having friends who are actively involved, and we discuss the mechanisms underlying this connection.