Lifelogging: visions of absent audiencesICA Singapore, 2010

David Brake

With the support of the Mediatized Stories Network

Department of Media and Communications

http://www.le.ac.uk/mc/ or http://davidbrake.org/

Simple blogging communication model

Theory & RQs

• Used symbolic interaction (esp. Goffman) to focus on how meaning of communicative situation is constructed

• What do bloggers know of their audiences?

• What relationship do they seek with these audiences?

Methodology

• Google search for London-based personal weblogs

• Email survey (N=150) to get demographics and invite for interview

• Face to face semi-structured interviews with stratified sample of 23 bloggers

• Thematic analysis of interview transcripts

9 April 2023 David Brake

Findings: Knowing the audience

• Considerable potential for producer knowledge - through active feedback and passive collection

•But knowledge seldom sought – why?

9 April 2023 David Brake

Partly lack of interest

1/3 of survey respondents used tracking software on their weblogs, 1/3 of these looked at it monthly or less

“I did have a hit counter because I was intrigued to see whether anyone was reading and I was horrified to find that pretty much nobody was”.

“I think I used to have one but it's not that interesting. It's just numbers.”

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Partly (seeming) wilful ignorance/self-deception

“I put things on my blog but I don't think of anybody reading it. Someone will say, "what the hell did you write that for?" and I'll say "oh yeah - sorry". I just don't put two and two together - it's a slight form of insanity I suppose.”

‘Elaine’ – a journalist who had written in a magazine about starting her blog

Audience relationships

Self-directed

• Creative expression– All the way through Uni I got firsts for anything that

involved writing anything… the blog came along and I thought ‘this is a great opportunity for me to actually do more writing’

• Quasi-therapy– If someone pissed me off or annoyed me - generally if I

put it down it didn’t annoy me any more.

• Tool use as an end in itself/habit– I just throw myself into something – get really really

involved. It’s great – it gives you a role and something to get your teeth into - so you keep your antennae out for new trends on the web and weblogs was a big trend

The temporal dimension• There was a guy advertising a LiveAid ticket for

free as long as he came and stayed… I said ‘read my blog to see if you want to do it’ so he read my entire blog. The entire thing. Really creeps me out... I didn’t really think anyone would pay that much attention to go all the way back through it and really really read it.

• I don’t think anyone would scroll back and read it all

• I think my fingers don’t post if I can’t stand by it. I may live to regret that sometime.

• Weblogs might be an interesting reflection of our society in the future. Maybe for a social historian.

Revised blogging model

Limitations of study

• Respondents all urban, UK-based• Sample of 23 not large enough to reveal

systematic differences in audience relations by socio-demographic categories

• Sample chosen to include only those currently revealing personal information publicly

• Unclear how applicable findings are to other ‘social media’ eg those with privacy controls

Further Questions? Comments?

Contact details:David Brakedbrake@gmail.comhttp://davidbrake.org/

Thank you for coming!