Female and blogging
This week we have many choices to read for the blog post, and they all look interesting! In the beginning, I want to choose one article that discussed same-sex marriage as an “event” on Twitter, but later I decide to stick on the population that I have chosen for the past posts, that is youth and female. So the article I’m discussing in this post is “Young women's blogs as ethical spaces.”
The author treated “blog” as an “ethical place” that allows young women to share personal experiences. Both writers and commenters could disclose themselves, build up self-confidence and self-development and shape their values. The author analyzed 20 most populate blogs in Sweden that were written by young women aged from 18 to 28 years old. The data were collected from February to May in 2009, and both blog posts and associated comments were analyzed. Three themes that connect subjective disclosure and social norms were categorized: self-confidence, love and relationship, and body ideals. Contents related to self-confidence are more likely the life experiences: how writers made meanings of their success or stories, and how commenters reacted on these stories. Love and relationship were about self-disclosure of experiences and emotions in relationships, and opinions and debates of dealing with relationships. Body ideals were about appearance and body weight. Writers shared personal pictures or the ways they deal with obesity or eating disorder. Under this theme, there were more negative comments that critique writers’ viewpoints. From this article, it’s not surprised to find that positive comments and “comments that share similar perspectives with the main post” were more welcomed, which means writers and readers both gained support from those who share a similar situation. On the other hand, those who had comments that against main posts were also seeking support from the opposite perspective. The author also indicated that a blog post or a comment could be a starting point to “invite” readers to share their coping strategies of an issue (e.g., losing weight, being single).
From this article, I conclude the functions of blogging for young women (write, read and comment blog post) are two folds: 1) to gain social support by self-disclosure and 2) to cope with certain situation, and I think both functions are sorts of empowerment for female (Stavrositu & Sundar, 2012).
Other studies also revealed the importance of self-disclosure on blogs. For example, Chen (2012) survey 312 female bloggers. They found that females who had higher self-disclosure need tend to treat blogs as places to express their voice. One recent study on female bloggers who have infertility elicited similar functions of blogging. Bronstein & Knoll applied thematic analysis to analyze 400 blog posts. They found that the intrinsic motivation of blogging for infertile women is self-expression. They share positive and negative emotions, rethink the identity as women, family issues raised by infertility. The extrinsic motivations include sharing coping strategies, finding social supports, and changing the atmosphere in the society about infertility.
Although blogging can bring positive impacts for female bloggers, there are also risks that bloggers need to be cautious that Lövheim didn’t mention much in the article. Studies mentioned in the previous section revealed the emotional supports from blogging. However, unfavorable comments or interaction between writers and commenters can cause negative feelings. For example, a mother in a study on parent bloggers mentioned that she felt uncomfortable about some parenting suggestions from comments. (Blum-Ross & Livingstone, 2017) As mentioned in a presentation at MIT, other risks of blogging may include personal privacy, online permeant records, and harassment and bullying via posting. Yao (2009)’s study interview eight female Filipino blogger who live in UK, and the results revealed some privacy concerns of participants: the identifiable information about family members (e.g. the time that no one is at home), sensitive personal information (e.g. openness about sexuality), and being identified in the real life. In addition, cyberbullying may be another issue of blogging. Blogs can be seen as a type of social media platform. One common type of cyberbullying is using comments on social media to spread harassment, denigration and flaming (Willard, 2007). Since most blogs are publicly accessible and everyone can be the commenter, bloggers might under risk of receiving malicious comments and further engaging in cyberbullying incidents.
A blog can be an ethical place to empower bloggers, but it can also be a risky place to endanger oneself. Not only young female bloggers need to be cautious; everyone who writes, read and comment blog post should think twice before post.
Reference:
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| Source: https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/blog/whats-the-harm-in-blogging/ |
From this article, I conclude the functions of blogging for young women (write, read and comment blog post) are two folds: 1) to gain social support by self-disclosure and 2) to cope with certain situation, and I think both functions are sorts of empowerment for female (Stavrositu & Sundar, 2012).
Other studies also revealed the importance of self-disclosure on blogs. For example, Chen (2012) survey 312 female bloggers. They found that females who had higher self-disclosure need tend to treat blogs as places to express their voice. One recent study on female bloggers who have infertility elicited similar functions of blogging. Bronstein & Knoll applied thematic analysis to analyze 400 blog posts. They found that the intrinsic motivation of blogging for infertile women is self-expression. They share positive and negative emotions, rethink the identity as women, family issues raised by infertility. The extrinsic motivations include sharing coping strategies, finding social supports, and changing the atmosphere in the society about infertility.
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| Source: https://tccl.arcc.albany.edu/knilt/index.php/Unit_2:_Dangers_of_Blogs_and_Safeguarding_Our_Students |
Although blogging can bring positive impacts for female bloggers, there are also risks that bloggers need to be cautious that Lövheim didn’t mention much in the article. Studies mentioned in the previous section revealed the emotional supports from blogging. However, unfavorable comments or interaction between writers and commenters can cause negative feelings. For example, a mother in a study on parent bloggers mentioned that she felt uncomfortable about some parenting suggestions from comments. (Blum-Ross & Livingstone, 2017) As mentioned in a presentation at MIT, other risks of blogging may include personal privacy, online permeant records, and harassment and bullying via posting. Yao (2009)’s study interview eight female Filipino blogger who live in UK, and the results revealed some privacy concerns of participants: the identifiable information about family members (e.g. the time that no one is at home), sensitive personal information (e.g. openness about sexuality), and being identified in the real life. In addition, cyberbullying may be another issue of blogging. Blogs can be seen as a type of social media platform. One common type of cyberbullying is using comments on social media to spread harassment, denigration and flaming (Willard, 2007). Since most blogs are publicly accessible and everyone can be the commenter, bloggers might under risk of receiving malicious comments and further engaging in cyberbullying incidents.
A blog can be an ethical place to empower bloggers, but it can also be a risky place to endanger oneself. Not only young female bloggers need to be cautious; everyone who writes, read and comment blog post should think twice before post.
Reference:
- Blum-Ross, A., & Livingstone, S. (2017). “Sharenting,” parent blogging, and the boundaries of the digital self. Popular Communication, 15(2), 110-125.
- Bronstein, J., & Knoll, M. (2015). Blogging motivations of women suffering from infertility. Information Research, 20(2).
- Chen, G. M. (2012). Why do women write personal blogs? Satisfying needs for self-disclosure and affiliation tell part of the story. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(1), 171-180.
- Lövheim, M. (2011). Young women's blogs as ethical spaces. Information, Communication & Society, 14(3), 338-354.
- Stavrositu, C., & Sundar, S. S. (2012). Does blogging empower women? Exploring the role of agency and community. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 17(4), 369-386.
- Vale, K. (2006). Blogs: Benefits, Risks, and Exposures – MIT.
- Willard, N. (2007). Educator’s guide to cyberbullying. Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use.
- Yao, A. (2009). Enriching the migrant experience: Blogging motivations, privacy and offline lives of Filipino women in Britain. First Monday, 14(3).
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