Dear bloggers,

For those of you who recently participated in my survey about blogging, thank you so much for participating! The winners of the Amazon.com gift card drawing have already been contacted. 

Thank you so much for participating in my study! I am happy to say that over 300 people participated in the study, which was enough to run the appropriate statistical tests. This study was my doctoral dissertation, which I will be presenting to my committee soon in hopes of successfully earning my Ph.D. in Communication Studies at Kent State University.

I just wanted to take a moment to summarize the study’s purposes and results. The purpose of this study was to explore the predictors of certain types of disclosures in blogs. Disclosure is revealing information about yourself that is not readily available. Specifically, I explored the breadth (the variety of topics disclosed), depth (how intimate disclosures are), amount, intent, valence (how positive or negative), and honesty/accuracy of disclosure in blog entries. Additionally, I looked at what is called “identity management cues,” or pieces of information about your true self that you disclose in your blog profile, like your name, age, gender, occupation, etc.

Bloggers in this study who disclosed more identity management cues were more likely to disclose more information in their blogs. The information they disclosed tended to be more intimate and personal.

One predictor I looked at was blogging motives, or the reasons you blog. Eight blogging motives emerged from this study – helping and informing others, social connection (to stay in touch with friends and family), exhibitionism (to get attention or show off), pass time (out of boredom or because there’s nothing better to do), archiving and organizing your internal thoughts and ideas, professional reasons (like for a job or class, or to post your resume online), to get feedback from your readers, and to report details about your day.

People who blogged to help and inform others tended to be more intentional, positive, and honesty/accurate in their disclosures. People who blogged for exhibitionism were less honest and accurate in their disclosures. Those motivated to blog by passing time disclosed less information and were less intentional or aware of their disclosures. Bloggers writing to archive and organize their thoughts disclosed more intimate information that was more negative. People maintaining blogs for professional reasons disclosed less of a variety of topics and were less honest and accurate in their disclosures. Participants in this study who blogged to get feedback disclosed about a wider variety of topics, and those who blogged to report details about their day disclosed more intimate information.

In this study, I also explored how bloggers’ perceptions of who is reading their blogs might affect their disclosure behaviors and their blogging motives. Bloggers who wrote primarily for themselves disclosed more information in their blogs. People writing for close family and friends disclosed about less topics, whereas those writing for casual friends disclosed about more topics in their blog entries. Bloggers who wrote for acquaintances disclosed less information in their profiles and about less topics in their blog entries. People whose blogs were set to private (in which access was restricted) were more likely to blog to pass time and to get feedback than those who maintained public blogs.

Individual characteristics, including age, gender, loneliness, and disclosiveness (a personality trait in which a person typically discloses private information in a variety of circumstances), were also explored. Younger people were more likely to blog to pass time, whereas older participants were more likely to blog to help and inform others. Men were more likely to blog for professional reasons, and women were more likely to wish to report details about their day in their blogs. People who scored high in loneliness were more likely to disclose negative information that was less honest and accurate in their blogs. Bloggers high in disclosiveness were more likely to disclose a large amount of intimate information, as well as more identity management cues in their profiles. These people were also more likely to be motivated to blog by exhibitionism and to report details.

Overall, the theories that I tested in my dissertation were shown to be helpful in the blogging context. Blogs are immensely popular right now, as you all know, but unfortunately scholars have largely ignored the role of private disclosure in personal journal blogs. Therefore, this study has both theoretical and practical implications.

If you wish to discuss this study further, feel free to email me at eekleman@kent.edu, or contribute to the discussion here.

Thanks again for your help! Your 15 minutes of participation really does make a difference to researchers like myself!

Sincerely,

Erin Kleman