April 22, 2005
Scott Carter: The Role of Author in Topical Blogs
Carter, Scott. 2005. The Role of Author in Topical Blogs. HCI 2005. Extended abstracts. Pages: 1256 - 1259.
Abstract:
Web logs, or blogs, challenge the notion of authorship. Seemingly, rather than a model in which the author’s writings are themselves a contribution, the blog author weaves a tapestry of links, quotations, and references amongst generated content. In this paper, I present a study of the role of the author plays in the construction of topical blogs, in particular focusing on how blog authors make decisions about what to post and how they judge the quality of posts. To this end, I analyzed the blogs and blogging habits of eight participants using a quantitative analysis tool that I developed, a diary study, and interviews with each participant. Results suggest that authors of topical blogs often do not but strive to create new content, often follow journalistic conventions, use the content of their blogs as a reference tool for other work practices, and are connected as a community by a set of source documents. Results also show that Instant Messaging is useful as an interview medium when questions center around online content.
Notes:
Method: quant analysis of posts, diary study, interviews
Restricted subjects to 8 US bloggers that concentrate on IP issues.
Findings: 1) authors of topical blogs often do not but strive to create new content, often follow journalistic conventions, use the content of their blogs as a reference tool for other work practices, and are connected as a community by a set of source documents; 2) that Instant Messaging (IM) is useful as an interview medium when questions center around online content.
The analysis tool that Carter reports on looks at data like word length, average external links, percent of post quoted, etc. Carter positions his data against Herring's.
Subjects defined a good post as one that "contributes new information or, to a lesser extent, extensive commentary about some issue on which the participant is an expert" (3). Some also thought timeliness mattered.
- Best to link to completely new information or at least source info (court decisions, laws).
"Participants reported judging the quality of a post primarily by trackbacks (links from other blogs to their post) or by their own analysis of server traffic. Another metric that most participants used was links from blogs with a much larger perceived audience than their own. Participants did not attribute much value to the size and quality of comments left on the blog" (3).
6 of the participants kept journalistic conventions when updating - marking changes with things like bold, colored text, etc. 2 modeled it after a wiki.
- blog is "reference archive" - connected to work (but also limited by); each other helps keep on top of new material
- concerns over voice (academic talk vs. layperson)
- everyone analyzed their traffic (many said that others didn't matter)
There is nothing shocking about this study, but it is a clean reminder of what is going on in topical blogosphere. Simple and well done. It is also an interesting encouragement to think about how to do a diary study with bloggers.
Category: blogging
Posted by zephoria at April 22, 2005 8:28 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.zephoria.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.fcgi/3194
