The psychological effects of blogging
Next week I am finally finishing with this semester... I think I am starting to calm down a little bit. Two summer courses and the fall semester will be my last in the university. I wish I had the time to do a masters degree but... let's say I should have known better than waisting my time in France... Now I harvest what I have seeded. I wish I was sure about what I wanted to do... Anyway. This entry is not about random ramblings.
I wrote a paper on the psychological effects of blogging and I want to share it.
The psychological effects of blogging
Introduction
Blogging is the recording of one’s thoughts, news or commentary and the sharing of links, videos and even music in a specifically constructed web page, the blog, short for web log. A blog can also be collective or be part of a community.
According to the type of blog someone keeps, he/she might have different expectations and different motivations.
Private individuals create blogs as a vehicle for self-expression and self-empowerment. According to Blood, blogging makes people more thoughtful and articulate observers of the world around them. (Herring Scheidt, Bonus, Wright)
The most popular blog type, the personal journals, whether they are directed towards the self or towards the others usually have two major purposes: benefiting the individual and his/her understanding of oneself or benefiting one’s relationships with the others.
Benefits of blogging
Maybe it should be considered that the people who start blogging begin with a certain amount of optimism, but keeping an online diary might help individuals feeling more socially accepted and have more satisfaction with their friendships. They also exhibit less anxiety and depression. Bloggers are given the opportunity to vent and express their emotions. (Baker and Moore)
Another important benefit of blogging is helping individuals improve their information handling skills. Properly expressing the issue developed, with a meaningful organization and source handling is essential in the success of a blog and its effectiveness.
Blog authors have repeated experience in appropriately transmitting information, leaving comments on other's blogs, pinging TrackBacks, and obtaining new information from other blogs. (Miura & Yamashita)
It must also be noted that positive feedback is essential in the benefit one can have from keeping a blog and it can contribute to the willingness somebody can have in continuing to blog. It can influence positively not only the personal satisfaction with expressions of sympathy, support, or encouragement but it can also affect the satisfaction with the information one receives. (Miura & Yamashita)
Writing in a blog can be satisfying in an artistic level (actually posting art of any form or just making it look beautiful by itself), a personal level (feeling better about oneself by expressing concerns, troubles or simply ranting) and a social level (receiving comments means that others see and read the blog and if it’s a group blog it needs coordination and discussion on the content with others).
Both positive and negative comments can have psychological benefits. Of course positive comments are always encouraging. But even the negative ones, when the blogger realizes that they are just the thought of one other person, he can use them in better defending his/her position or even become aware of different thought patterns. Sometimes we become aware of how important something is when the others ignore it or we see how common and insignificant something is when other comment on it.
Actually, a blog can function as psychotherapeutic medium involving language, images, sound, color and a lot of interaction with others. In order for it to function primarily as a psychotherapeutic tool it must have a protective boundary with privacy tools that blogging sites provide.
Dangers of blogging
Blogging can have negative effects, especially if someone spends so much time with it that he/she starts neglecting social life or other important priorities. But this can be the consequence of excessive internet use in general.
There is a negative effect of blogging and participating in communities through blogging because of the social component of the activity. It is the negative effect of having to deal with unpleasant situations, angry and even disrespectful people. This can happen also in forums and chat rooms, but by definition a blog is a lot more personal.
Although moderating comments might be met with hostility, it can also be necessary as a protection from the harm negative feelings can do in one’s life. Accepting anything in one’s blog might reflect the consequences of accepting anything in real life. Kathy Sierra explains how mirror neurons automatically mentally mimic whatever we perceive and how emotions can be contagious. (Sierra, 2006) A blogger might have to face hostility, irony or even ambiguity that triggers confusion and causes a lot of pressure.
Moreover, as Dear Famous A$$hole and Jami, two randomly chosen bloggers explain, a lot of pressure can arise from the quest of interesting subjects and the need to update the blog frequently. (Dear Famous A$$hole, 2005, Jami, 2006).
In addition, frequent updates can lead to more readers, more comments to deal with and more pressure to keep blogging. And this is where blogging ceases to be a psychotherapeutic tool. It might help people build up self-confidence, but this confidence needs experience, and bloggers need to be patient and have long-term goals instead of constant pressure. Ever increasing expectations can make blogging an obsession. (Whitehill, 2007)
What must be also mentioned is that when bloggers continuously check out who is visiting their blog and why, they might find out that the visitors were searching for something that was not actually in the blog. As Stan Haskins mentions, this can create a feeling of inadequacy and disappointment. It is an opportunity to deal with the fact that we can’t satisfy everyone in life. (Haskins, 2007)
Finally, a last danger of blogging that must be mentioned is the one of stalking and this is why the practice of blogging needs either locked entries or minimal mentioning of private identification that can help tracking.
Conclusion
Keeping a blog can be a very interesting and enriching experience but it is a choice that becomes a lifestyle and it needs caution. Bloggers must remember that the primary motivation must be fun and that expressing themselves is more important than acquiring and maintaining fame.
Works cited
Dear Famous A$$hole (2005) “The pressure of blogging”. Paperbride. Retrieved in Thursday 15th May 2008 from http://paperbride.blogspot.com/2005/03/pressure-of-blogging.html
Haskins, Stan. (2007) “Blogging as psychotherapy: my new mission statement”. Glued to the string. Retrieved in Thursday 15th May 2008 from http://gluedtothestring.blogspot.com/2007/10/blogging-as-psychotherapy-my-new.html
Herring, Susan; Lois Ann Scheidt; Sabrina Bonus; Elijah Wright. 2004. "Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs". Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science HICSS-37.
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/classes/ics234cw04/herring.pdf
Jamie (2006) “Jami Cracks Under the Pressure of Blogging”. The Very Important Thoughts Of Jami. Retrieved in Thursday 15th May 2008 from
http://pghsfavoritejami.blogspot.com/2006/06/jami-cracks-under-pressure-of-blogging_28.html
Miura, Asako. Yamashita Kiyomi. (2007). Psychological and social influences on blog writing: An online survey of blog authors in Japan. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), article 15. Retrieved in Thursday 15th May 2008 from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/miura.html
Ryan, Claudine. (2008) “Blogging boosts your social life: research”. ABC news.Retrieved in Thursday 15th May 2008 from
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/03/2178512.htm
Sierra, Kathy. (2006) “Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain.” Creating passionate users. Retrieved in Thursday 15th May 2008 from
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/angrynegative_p.html
Whitehill, Nate. (2007) “The pressures of blogging consistently”. Retrieved in Thursday 15th May 2008 from http://natewhitehill.com/the-pressures-of-blogging-consistently/