The Past, Present and Future of Weblogs

Susan C. Herring

School of Library and Information ScienceIndiana University, Bloomington

Definition

Weblog — a frequently modified web page in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence

Related phenomena

Online journal host sites (e.g., LiveJournal.com, DiaryLand.com)

“Community weblogs” (e.g., Slashdot.com, Metafilter.com)

Size

1,454,524 weblogs indexed by the NITLE Weblog Census as of 10/31/03

959,985 (66%) estimated active Including online journal sites brings

the estimated total to 4.12 million (Perseus, October 2003), of which 34% are active

Exponential growth of blogs

The “Standard View”

Weblogs are value-added filters of external (typically, Web) content; radically new; intellectually and socially transformative Mass media (e.g., Glaser 2002; Lasica 2001) Blog authors (e.g., D. Winer, R. Blood) Reproduced in assumptions of scholarly

studies (e.g., Krishnamurty 2002; Park 2003)

Standard history

Earliest precursor - “what’s new” pages by Tim Berners-Lee (1993)

1st modern weblog - Dave Winer’s Scripting News (1996)

Jorn Barger coins the term ‘weblog’ (1997) Peter Merholz re-analyzes it as ‘we-blog’

(1998); later shortened to ‘blog’ Blogger software (1999) makes blogging

accessible Blogs attract media attention after 9/11

Present-day situation

Pre-filtered Web content E.g., Robot Wisdom

Political commentary E.g., InstaPundit

Knowledge management E.g., Dave Winer at Harvard’s Berkman

Center Engaging “voices”

E.g., Megnut Interlinked community (the “Blogosphere”)

Future projections

Democratizing/socially transformative (Gillmore - “every employee should have a public weblog”)

Politically influential (Rosen - “information flows from the public to the press”)

Knowledge creating (Burg – “emergent intelligence”)

Problems with the Standard View

Ahistorical: Shallow time depth Partial: Excludes many contemporary

blog phenomena Misleading: Misrepresents the nature

of weblogs, with implications for future trajectory

Specifically…

Limits consideration of historical antecedents to the Web

Overlooks personal journal blogs; privileges blogs created by an educated, adult, male elite

Uncritically represents blogging as intellectual, influential in the public sphere

Research study

Blog Research on Genre project (BROG) Sabrina Bonus, Susan Herring, Lois Scheidt,

Elijah Wright

Goal: to characterize empirically the “average blog”

A snapshot of the present as a benchmark for future comparison

Data sample

“Core” blogs (excl. LiveJournal, DiaryLand) Minimum 2 entries

Random sampling from blo.gs site Tracking 866,394 blogs as of 10/31/03 Sources: antville.org, blogger.com,

pitas.com,weblogs.com Excluded non-English blogs; blogs with no text in

first entry; blog software used for non-blog purpose; blog not updated within two weeks

203 blogs collected and coded March-May 2003

Methodology

Web content analysis (Bates & Lu, 1997; cf. Bauer, 2000)

Genre characteristics (Chandler, 1998; Dillon & Gushrowski, 2000; cf. Yates & Orlikowsky, 1992) Producer Purpose Structure

Coded 44 features in each blog; quantified results

Hypotheses

Blog content tends to be external to the author (news; strange-but-true phenomena; technical/scholarly information, etc.)

Blog authors are typically well-educated adult males

Blogs are interactive, attracting multiple comments from readers

Blogs are heavily interlinked

Findings: Blog content

Type Frequency Percentage

Personal journal 140 70.4

Filter 25 12.6

K-log 6 3.0

Mixed 19 9.5

Other 9 4.5

199 100

Blog entry (Lazy Gnome)

Friday, 13th June 2003 3.08pm - trigger happy hippy with a Canon AE-1 If I go away, I take my camera. Standard practice.So, for your viewing displeasure, there are 4 new gallerys to view:

watery timesmy 1st b+w shootSwanage area + 1sea and air

First two are from my latest trip to Edinburgh to see my little sweetie. The second two were taken from my 4 day trip to the south coast with my parents in their campervan (I had a 4 man tent all to myself!).

Seeing as the last 'family holiday' I can remember was about 8 years ago, it was a real treat for me.

Comment ?

Findings: Blog authors

Characteristic Frequency Percentage

One author 196 90.8

Male 110 54.2

Adult (20 years or older) 115 59.6

Student 73 57.5

Located in USA 104 69.8

Blog authors (cont.) Blog content varies according to gender of blog

author Personal journals & other: 60% Female, 40% Male Filters, k-logs & mixed: 15% Female, 85% Male

Blog content varies according to age of blog author Personal journals & other: 60% Teen, 40% Adult Filters, k-logs & mixed: 5% Teen, 95% Adult

Many adult blog authors appear to be in their early 20’s

The second most frequent occupation is ‘unemployed’

Findings: Comments

Percent of blogs allowing comments: 43% Related to default settings in blogging software

Number of comments per newest entry:mean .3mode 0range 0-6

Number of comments per oldest entry:mean .3mode 0range 0-7

Findings: Links

Percent of blogs containing external links (excluding badges): 69.5

Number of links per newest entry:mean .65mode 0range 0-11

Percent of newest entries that link to a news source: 8.2

Percent of newest entries that link to another blog: 6.7

Summary of findings

Blog content is mostly personal (and often intimate)

Blog authors are roughly equally split between male and female, adult and teen Adult males create more filters and k-logs Females and teens create more personal

journals Most blog entries receive no comments Most blog entries contain no links

Caveat

Possible sampling bias Small sample size English only

Problem for historical account

The typical modern blog is unlikely to have evolved from lists of links on the Web

Alternative historical account

Blogs developed out of previous Web genres (e.g., online journal, personal home page, hotlist)

Blog genres have antecedents in previous offline genres (e.g., diaries, newsletters, editorials)

The blog can be seen as part of a continuous evolution of the journal format since the 17th century

Online journals

Since 1995 Co-exist with blogs Like personal journal blogs:

More females than males Personal content Updated daily or nearly daily Reverse chronological sequence Some links Switch to blog software

Hand-written diaries Since 14th c. in England ‘Diary’ > Latin dies ‘days’ Multiple uses

“We have our state diurnals, relating to national affairs. Tradesmen keep their shop books. Merchants their account books. Lawyers have their books of pre[c]edents. Physitians have their experiments. Some wary husbands have kept a diary of daily disbursements. Travellers a Journall of all that they have seen and hath befallen them in their way.”

(John Beadle)

Growth in popularity in 17th c. Samuel Pepys’ diary (1659-1669)

Entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary, Oct. 30, 1660

Subsequent evolution

Blog uses expand Journal type overtakes filter type Shift from link to personal focus

Justin Hall, one of the pioneers of the online journal:

“When I first discovered the web I was very excited by the tremendous amounts of information. I surfed the web far and wide in them early days, and I kept a log, of sorts. … Then, I started posting stories about my life; context for the rest of the content. That part of my site grew to be the most involving and perhaps engaging.”

Problem for future predictions

The typical weblog is unlikely to be intellectually and socially transformative

Alternative future perspective Increasing mundane use

AOL (35.6 million subscribers) Increasing contentiousness

The “blogs of war” (Cavanaugh, 2002) Increasing commercialization

Ads on free software Fewer features on free sites Paid blog hosting services Business blogs Astro-turfing and spamming

Increasing non-blog use of blog software

The blog as hybrid

Multiple functional antecedents Mixed content within a single blog Shares features of online and offline

genres Intermediate between standard Web

documents and interactive computer-mediated communication (CMC)

Binary feature comparison of blogs with written and computer-mediated genres

Genre Series of msgs

Subject-ive view

External content

Public aud.

Single theme

Readers comm’nt

Multi-media

CMC # of + features

Hand-written diary

+ + – – – – – – 2

Newspaper editorial

+ + + + + + (in n’paper)

– – 5

Project journal + – + – + – (-) – 3

Travelogue + +? + +/– (–) – + – 5?

Post-it notes (–) – +/– (–) –? +? (in same

medium)

– – 2?

Personal letter +/– + – – – + (in same

medium)

(-) – 3

Personal home page

– + – + – – (not usually)

+ + 4

Usenet newsgroup

+ + +/– + (+) + – + 7

Journal blog + + – + – +/- + + 6

Filter blog + + + + +/– + + + 8

K-log + (-) + +/ – (+) + + + 7

Weblogs on a continuum between standard Web pages and CMC

Standard Web Weblogs AsynchronousPages Online Community CMC

Journals Blogs

rarely updated frequently updated constantly updatedasymmetrical broadcast asymmetrical exchange symmetrical exchangemultimedia limited multimedia text-based

Conclusion

Blogs featured in contemporary public discourses about blogging are the exception, rather than the rule

Important to look at “average” blogs as well as interesting/unusual ones Socio-political, social-psychological, and

technical implications

Socio-historical analysis constitutes a useful antidote to the ahistoricity of discourse about blogs and the Internet in general

Conclusion (cont.)

Blogs may ultimately prove transformative, but not in favoring a specific content, audience, or quality

Rather, they create new affordances that will be open to a variety of uses (cf. email)

The End

The BROG blog

http://www.blogninja.com