Conclusions

The aim of this book was to investigate the motivations of the average blogger. Looking mainly at personal rather than corporate blogs, it focused on the basic question: why blog?

There are many possible motivations put forward by academic researchers, the mainstream media and bloggers themselves. Bloggers wish to contribute to public debate; they use their blogs to vent about both public affairs and personal issues; they work through issues in their own lives and seek support from their readership; and they can use their blogs to make friends, make money, make sense of information and make a name for themselves.

Blogging can be a form of online diary-writing. There is much that is diary-like about a blog – its chronological structure; its potential for a focus on the writer and his or her experiences and feelings. Such journal blogs are particularly attractive to women bloggers – indeed blogs have been described as the traditionally feminine act of diary-writing, meeting the traditionally masculine world of ICT, and it was noticeable that the idea of the blog as diary was slightly more popular with our women survey respondents than the men. Men are more likely to blog about external events, rather than personal ones, which has been suggested as one reason for their popularity and overall dominance in the blogosphere. However, it may be that, by combining online communication with the more traditional genre, a blog offers men the opportunity to experience diary-writing without the feminine connotations of a traditional diary.

However, blogging is more than diary-writing because blogging is performed in the public gaze and with the benefits of Internet technology. While the respondents to our surveys understood the concept of the blog as an online diary, they did not exclusively think of their blogging in such terms. Respondents rarely chose just one definition of blogging when offered the descriptions of diary-writing, publishing, journalism and other. They saw blogging as a combination of at least two of these, and the majority of respondents selected all three of the descriptions offered.

A blog has an external audience: it is not just written for the benefit of the author, but also offers the possibilities of communication with others, often in similar situations to that of the blogger. It is noticeable that comment-writers on blogs are frequently similarly situated and therefore feel an instant connection to the blogger’s experience. This audience does not have to read the blog in a conventional chronological way, as one would read a traditional paper diary. With the use of archives, the search function, links and other categorisation aids that might be offered by the blogger, the reader can navigate through the blog in a variety of different ways, creating their own paths through, away from and back to the current blog post. Thus Internet technology offers the reader a more fluid reading experience than the static traditional diary. In addition, blogs sit on the cusp of the private and public sphere – part of the public sphere and yet based within the privacy of the blogger’s own website and offering the blogger the ability to edit, censor or cut any comments or postings (their own or others’) that they do not like.

Thus while the description of blogs as online diaries can be a useful quick definition, most bloggers see blogging as more than this. And it should also be noted that online diarists draw a sharp distinction between themselves and bloggers. While online diarists might make use of blogs for immediate, spontaneous notes and impressions, they use their online diaries for more formal and considered writing. Blogs are seen as a more immediate genre – collecting a writer’s impressions of events or emotions almost while they happen.

Thus blogs can fulfil a diary function for their writers, and yet because they are publicly available for other readers they are both more and less than a diary. They are not fully private, although the blogger is in control of what is allowed to be written in the blog, and they offer the possibilities not just of an audience, but an audience that might respond with comments and feedback. Bloggers who start their blog with the intention of keeping it as a diary can find that it develops away from the original diary form because of such feedback and they can quickly come to appreciate the extra benefits that come from having a responsive readership:

However, even with the added attractions of an audience it should be noted that many bloggers still claim to be writing primarily for their own benefit. Journal blogs in particular often contain apologies to the blogger’s readers for a particularly self-reflective or ranting post, while reminding readers that the blog was primarily set up for the benefit of the blogger. Events or relationships may not be fully explained because the blogger is not writing primarily for the reader and therefore feels little need to offer explanatory descriptions. With such posts bloggers might also be distinguishing between the general reader, who is not intimate with the blogger, and those readers who are also offline friends and are thus able to fill in the missing detail between the lines of such sketchy posts.

This leads us to consider the way in which blogging can be psychologically beneficial. Bloggers can be motivated to blog because of a desire to deepen their understanding of themselves and because it helps them to cope with events in their lives. The use of self-reflective writing in order to understand and learn from experiences can be linked to both traditional diary-keeping and more modern psycho-therapeutic practices where clients are encouraged to write down their experiences in order to explore them in depth. We have noted, for example, that the Internet offers a safe space within which bloggers can discuss their own sexuality and that sex blogging is represented in the mainstream media as particularly associated with women bloggers (although it can be disapproved of in the wider blogosphere as a cheap trick to raise a blogger’s profile). Thus a blog can offer a safe place in which a blogger can explore his or her inner psyche, but with the added benefit that its public nature offers the possibility of communication with and support from others. This support might come from total strangers – and some bloggers are attracted to the idea of discussing personal issues with someone who does not know them and will never meet them – or from offline friends and family. A blog can be a structured and indirect way in which to discuss problems with people a blogger knows in real life. It means that the blogger is in control of what is said and offers the possibility of avoiding direct, face-to-face confrontation. Thus distress and emotional need can be a motivating factor for some people to start blogging, and the support and friendship they find online can motivate them to continue.

The formation and nurturing of social relationships can also be a strong motivating factor in starting and continuing a blog. When discussing friendship as a motivator for blogging, some commentators distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Thus, some bloggers start to blog in order to find new friends on the Internet, whilst others blog in order to maintain friendships already formed elsewhere. Many people start blogging at the urging of their friends who are already online or in order to keep in touch with family and friends who might be geographically distant – the explanation for the many expat and ‘gap year’ blogs that can be found. It is suggested the women, in particular, have taken their traditional role as the communication hubs in a household online and now use Internet tools such as blogs and e-mail in order to keep in contact with distant family and friends. But blogging can also be used to establish new friendships and assuage loneliness. Bloggers writing about a particular subject that interests them – whether it be parenting, bird-watching or their religious beliefs – can use the Internet to communicate with others with similar interests, which might not be possible for them offline. Indeed, some bloggers prefer to communicate with strangers online – having a relationship ‘on your own terms’ also offers the possibility of staying in control of the friendship – and are uncomfortable with the idea of people they know reading their blog. This can sometimes lead to censorship of the blog or even its cessation.

Another way in which blogging can be psychologically beneficial is the way in which it offers bloggers the possibility of venting or ‘blowing off steam’ about either public affairs or personal issues. Again, blogs can be seen as a safe space in which to rant about upsetting or irritating problems – and here an audience can be especially appreciated. Letting off steam about problems can be both cathartic and useful and can be a major benefit of blogging. Thus mommy blogs allow mothers to offer a ‘warts and all’ picture of the realities of parenthood while pseudonymous academic blogs allow lecturers to rant about their students or their managers. However, the sense of security and a safe space in which to make these complaints may be a false one. Bloggers have been ‘dooced’ (sacked or disciplined for their blogging); criminals have been tracked down through their blogs and bloggers are now much more aware of the fact that their blogs may be searched by current or future employers and used in evidence against them. While much of the ‘venting’ to be found in the blogosphere is related to personal issues, there are also links to be found here with another oft-mentioned forerunner of the blog – the letter to the newspaper editor or the opinion column. Bloggers, and as we have seen particularly male bloggers, can be attracted to blogging because it offers them an opportunity to publish their opinion on topical news, possibly offering a different perspective or more in-depth material than is offered by the mainstream media. Such posts do not pretend to objectivity, indeed many bloggers celebrate their subjectivities, but represent the personal opinion and emotions of the blogger.

One of the most familiar images of the blogger that we find in the mainstream media is that of the ‘citizen journalist’, hoping to redress perceived distortions or failures in the news media and acting as part of a ‘fifth estate’. This is also a depiction with which our survey respondents were familiar – over half of all respondents agreed that blogging was a form of journalism. However, despite this identification, only a minority of our survey respondents described their own blogs in such terms. For the majority, blogging about external, political, events took second place to blogging about their own lives and experiences. It thus seems that, despite the coverage in the mainstream media about citizen journalists and the impact and importance of political bloggers, these remain a small sub-section of the blogosphere. Our respondents’ view of blogging as a form of journalism seems to have been influenced by media coverage of A-list blogs’ perceived news-agendas and blogs provided by the mainstream media itself rather than their own personal experience of blogging, and it thus seems that for the average blogger, blogging is more to do with personal communication than with campaigning journalism.

However, whilst only a minority of bloggers consider themselves to be acting as journalists, far more are open to the idea that they might be publishers, and the use of a blog in order to practise and display a blogger’s creative writing skills was a popular motivation. The conception of blogging as creative writing was particularly popular with the American respondents to the 2007 survey, and it was possible to make a distinction between them and British respondents, who associated blogging more with information technology tools and skills. This idea of the blog as a portfolio for a blogger’s creative writing skills was linked to the hope that, through their blog, a blogger might be discovered by a publisher and be offered a contract. Such ambitions are not groundless – the example of the success of a blogger like Belle de Jour demonstrates that publishers do monitor popular blogs and that publishing opportunities can arise in this way. Indeed, the blog turned book is now such a frequent phenomenon that it has its own term – the blook. While successes such as Diary of a Call-Girl and A Wife in the North are not the norm, and the majority of bloggers have to content themselves with the appreciation of their blog’s readership, a blog does offer the real potential to be a place where creative writing can be displayed and commented upon.

The possibilities of financial reward offered by blogging encompass not just the publishing of the blog in book form but also included hosting advertising, selling subscriptions, the marketing of a blogger’s products and services or even selling a successful blog to a larger media company. A growing motivation in the blogosphere is connected to money, and this might be a particularly attractive motivator for bloggers based in the home, for example those who are caring for others, retired or unemployed. Blogs focused on particular subjects, such as parenting, have been attractive to advertisers since they can deliver a focused, loyal and financially responsible readership. However, such money-making may be criticised by others in the blogosphere – we have seen how many mommy bloggers have been particularly attacked for their collaboration with advertisers. It is interesting to note that women bloggers can be attacked in the blogosphere for writing both blogs that are too boring (mommy blogs) and those that are too titillating (sex blogs), suggesting that the satisfactions such women bloggers find in blogging must be strong enough to inspire them to ignore such criticisms.

Financial motivation is now such a motivator for one section of the blogosphere that in its latest report on the state of the blogosphere Technorati distinguished between what it termed ‘hobbyist’ bloggers and those who desired to at least partly supplement their income by blogging (Technorati, 2009). Many of our survey respondents expected to at least cover their blogging expenses, mostly through hosting advertising, and some were using their blogs to market goods and services. A select few were even professional bloggers, relying on their blogging skills to provide their entire income. It was noticeable that the majority of these respondents were female, and many were operating out of their own homes, hoping to augment the household income through their blogging.

Thus bloggers might be inspired to blog to find friends, to stay in touch with friends and family, for emotional support, to explore their inner psyche or sexuality, to vent their anger, to make their opinions and their writing skills known more widely or even to make money. What is important to note is that few bloggers had only one motivation. The majority of bloggers are motivated by a mixture of such motivations, just as the majority perceived blogging as a mixture of diary-writing, publishing, journalism and other definitions. And motivations might change over time, just as a blog might change. For example, diary blogs can become less introspective as the blogger starts to appreciate the feedback they are receiving from their readership, or filter blogs can become more personal as the blogger starts to enjoy displaying their writing skills. Some motivations, such as the use of the blog as a therapeutic tool, may only gradually dawn on the blogger and so may be more a motivation for continuing to blog rather than to start blogging in the first place. Blogging takes time, perseverance and commitment, and so in order for a blog to continue a blogger needs to find strong satisfaction and personal fulfilment in their blogging. While motivations differ from blogger to blogger, it does seem that in general women are more motivated by a desire to communicate with others while male bloggers find greater satisfaction than women in blogging to share their expertise, opinions and knowledge, and to find and share information. American men, in particular, found great satisfaction in demonstrations of their knowledge, wisdom or expertise, and their satisfaction in blogging appears to be related to their dominance in the Anglophone blogosphere.

However, as we have seen, there are bloggers who blog not because they want to or because they find great satisfaction in blogging but because they are told to blog as part of their job. We have seen that the mainstream media has now embraced blogging and that many newspapers and organisations such as the BBC now offer a variety of blogs by their reporters and columnists where they are able to write in a more personal and opinionated way, albeit still as employees of the company. In other words, the mainstream media is attempting to normalise blogging as an extension of journalism. However, while some journalists have been happy to embrace this opportunity, others have been less enthusiastic and motivation is a key factor in how committed such journalists can be to their blogs. As the research of Schultz and Sheffer demonstrated, those who were motivated to blog by their management rather than their own inclinations were more reluctant and less committed to blogging. To avoid this problem, some blogs have been ‘bought in’ by the newspapers rather than relying on their own journalists to start blogging.

A similar need for commitment can be found when blogs are used as educational or knowledge management tools. It is not enough for a lecturer or a manager to instruct their students or employees to start a blog. The blogger must find his or her blog personally useful in some way – perhaps as a tool for information management, as a way to communicate informally with others, as a support or as a way of showcasing their work – in order to be fully committed to the project. Blogging cannot be imposed from above; its benefits have to be clear in order for blogging to be enthusiastically taken up. And managers and lecturers need to be open to the possibility that their students and employees may find different benefits from blogging than the ones that are expected. The flexibility of blogging must be acknowledged – different bloggers make different uses and find different satisfactions from blogging.

Bloggers also adapt their blogging habits as change occurs. Thus Technorati’s latest survey of the state of the blogosphere in 2009 found that bloggers were far more likely than the general population to make use of the new micro-blogging phenomenon of Twitter. While 14 per cent of the general population uses Twitter at present, 73 per cent of the blogging respondents to Techorati’s survey did so. Why did they use it? To promote their blog, bring interesting links to light and to know what people are talking about. In other words it seems that the uses that these bloggers made of Twitter was to augment their blogging rather than to replace it.

Thus the key points to be understood from this project are that blogs are flexible and changeable: their usefulness and the satisfactions to be gained from blogging can alter over time as a blogger’s circumstances and needs change. They require commitment – the blogger must find his or her own satisfactions from blogging, it cannot be imposed from above. Bloggers are motivated to blog for a wide variety and mix of reasons – a need for support, communication, validation, to share expertise and knowledge, as an information management tool, as part of their job, even for financial recompense. What is clear is their enthusiasm for blogging and the many satisfactions they find in it. Perhaps the question should not be, why blog? But rather, why not?