The lovely Clarabel on Twitter posted this photo last week. This is a fine little collection of psychology text books (and a Philosophy one thrown in for good measure) that would be perfect for any undergraduate psychology student. As a psychology graduate myself I understand how expensive psychology text books are, so please, if you know anyone that could do with a helping hand with their first or second year of college ask them to get in contact with us. Leave a comment here, send me an email (sineadcochrane at gmail dot com), a tweet, or, contact Clara via an @ reply on twitter. These books are free to a good home and are in perfect condition. Even if any of these books have new editions now available, more often than not there are only slight changes made and they would be perfect to help you with your long road of study ahead.

*Update* Two hours after posting this the books found a home. Yey books!

This research found that in comparison to 2006 there are far more female bloggers and that the majority of bloggers are no longer based within the IT industry. Non-Bloggers were found to be more concerned about the persistent nature of the Internet than Bloggers, but both had similar concern for issues of online privacy. Results found that Irish internet users have no preference for reading blogs based outside of Ireland and that the majority read a mixture of both Irish and international blogs, and did not rate either as more credible than the other. It was found that Irish internet users do not perceive it as highly important to know the identity of a blog author, but that over 60% of Irish bloggers publish online using their real name.

The primary motivation for Irish bloggers is the ability to articulate their ideas through writing and almost 52% consider their blogging as a form of journalism. The majority of Bloggers indicated that they have never lied on their blogs and that they actively attempt to verify information before posting an article. It was found that 35% of Irish bloggers do not feel connected to the Irish blogosphere, and that the most common blogosphere identified with was based around the author’s interests rather than geography. Most importantly, it was found that the impact of blogging on blogger’s lives was in no way negative and very positive in some respects.

This research is the first to investigate the psychological areas of interest surrounding blogging applied to an Irish audience, and though estimates have suggested only 1% of the Irish online population are blogging, this is steadily increasing. 35% of the Non-Bloggers surveyed indicated they had plans to blog in the future and blogging is definitely becoming increasingly more popular in Ireland, as demonstrated by the 40% increase in blogs registered at Irishblogs.ie between July 2008 and February 2009.

An increase in blogging in Ireland would be welcome due to its predominantly positive effects, such as increasing our shared intellectual capital, and, as this research indicates, blogging can in fact increase social capital too.

Furthermore, most previous research with regard to blogging has focused on personal journal style blogging, and it could be assumed that bloggers who are motivated by personal reasons were unrepresented in the sample that participated in this research. However, this could also suggest that Irish bloggers are actually less inclined to write what is considered a traditional form of blog – the diary style journal. This could indicate a cultural difference between Irish and non-Irish bloggers, or, a categorisation issue with regard to previous blog research.

Blogs are a highly personalised medium with the ability to involve the reading public in an integral manner, and unlike the traditional media they are not edited or gate kept and for this reason traditional journalists argue about how much trust to place in the content of blogs, however, it is argued that the comments system facilitates peer review.

It has been suggested that there aren’t many bloggers in Ireland and therefore there have been few arguments over the differences between journalists and bloggers in Ireland. Nevertheless, this research found that almost 52% of Irish bloggers consider their blogging as a form of journalism, with over 58% of this group using their real name to publish online.

However, over 10% of bloggers described incidents where content was illegitimately sourced from their blogs by the traditional Irish media. Over 58% of this content was written work and almost 30% was in the form of either photographs or photo-shopped images.

Due to the archiving feature of blogging this could suggest that bloggers are less likely to lie on their blogs in comparison to other online mediums, such as synchronous chat. However, with regard to blogging there are issues of identity concealment to consider, whilst deceptive, they are necessary to preserve the bloggers’ privacy.

Correspondingly, this research found that over 86% of bloggers indicated that they actively attempt to verify information before posting it on their blog, and 87% indicated that they had never published a lie on their blog. Of the small number of bloggers that had posted a lie, the majority done so to either to maintain their anonymity or for the purposes of fiction/satire or to embellish a story.

The majority of both bloggers and non-bloggers indicated that they had at least once attempted to double check information found on both Irish and non-Irish blogs, with only approx. 15% having never done this. However, this doesn’t necessarily indicate low levels of trust in the medium, but does perhaps point toward an awareness of the fact that blog publishing is unregulated.

Interestingly of the approx. 40% that blog using a pseudonym, 23% of this group also blogged using their real name. This suggests that some bloggers are taking advantage of both the benefits of blogging as themselves i.e benefits to reputation, and also anonymously somewhere else online. Anonymity online can help individuals to explore their identity, reduce shyness and encourage interactions with others online.

Though the Internet does help to support strong tie relationships, it is particularity effective for weak tie groups, allowing for the efficient flow of information and facilitating the development of ideas, blogospheres are a particularly good example of how the internet facilitates this.

The blogosphere is a classic social network but its characteristics differentiate it from most social networks, where communication is predominantly verbal and unrecorded. Networks of bloggers will often aggregate all of their individual blogs to a centralised location online, and these are referred to as planet aggregators an example of which is Irishblogs.ie.

However, some blogs are more connected to a blogosphere than others, with some bloggers not being connected to any blogosphere at all. Over 65% of bloggers indicated that they were listed on an Irish planet aggregator, and almost 64% consider themselves a member of the Irish blogosphere. The remaining bloggers indicated that they were not listed and did not consider themselves part of the Irish blogosphere. This highlights the 35% of bloggers unconnected from the Irish blogosphere, and this could suggest that there are far more Irish people blogging than is known.

It was assumed that non-bloggers would rate blogs based outside of Ireland as more credible than Irish blogs. However, out of a maximum score of 20 the non-bloggers rated Irish blogs with a mean score of 13.02 and non-Irish blogs with 12.64. The mean rating of the credibility of Irish blogs was actually slightly higher, though not significantly so.

Previous research has suggested that the more an individual relies on a source, the higher credibility they attribute to it, and the bloggers did rate the overall credibility of blogs higher than the non-bloggers. However, neither the bloggers nor the non-bloggers rated either Irish blogs or non-Irish blogs as significantly higher in credibility than the other. Incidentally, without a comparison to credibility scores of the traditional forms of Irish media this rating can only be used to compare the two categories investigated – Irish blogs and non-Irish blogs.

Additionally, approximately 50% of both groups said that they read a mixture of both Irish and non-Irish blogs, and approx. 35% said that they primarily read Irish blogs. Both the bloggers and non-bloggers indicated that they believed that blogging was more popular in other countries, and both groups thought that the medium was popular, but not “very popular” worldwide.

The Internet supports social networks, helps build social capital and having access to individuals outside one’s usual close circle can provide access to non-redundant information, resulting in benefits such as employment connections. During this research it was assumed that blog writing had a positive effect on the social lives of Irish bloggers, and it was queried what impact, if any, it had on their academic and professional lives too.

35.5% of bloggers believed blogging had a positive effect on their social lives, with 19.9% saying it had a “very positive” effect. Most importantly though, less than 1% indicated that it had any negative effect, and less than 44% indicated that it had no effect. Additional questions revealed that blogging has had an especially positive effect on the development of weak tie relationships with 81.3% of bloggers indicating that they have made friends that they communicate with online because of blogging. Weak ties are typical of relationships among casual acquaintances and are important for sharing information, making contacts and increasing awareness about new ideas.

Most people have only a few strong ties (closely-knit groups) and many weak ties. However, strong tie relationships can and do initiate online and can successfully move offline, as demonstrated by the 28.45% of Irish bloggers who have developed close friendships because of their blogging, additionally 62.07% of Irish bloggers have met people in real life as a result of their blogging. Although socalisation was found to not be a primary motivation for Irish bloggers, these results suggest socalisation is a by-product of writing a blog.

In an international online survey it was found that blogging is both personally satisfying and has a positive impact on its writer’s lives, with some bloggers claiming to have received speaking or publishing opportunities and career advancement because of their blogs. During this research it was found that less than 3% of Irish bloggers indicated that blogging had any negative effects upon their academic or professional lives,  and over 34% indicated it had a positive effect on their professional lives, and over 33% said it had a “very positive” effect.  Additionally, over 50% said it had no effect on  their academic lives however, over 30% said it had a positive effect and over 15% said it had a “very positive” effect

Blogging as a form of knowledge sharing contributes to the creation of a public good in the form of shared intellectual capital, and the positive social effects discussed above, combined with the academic and professional positive effects of blogging suggest that blogging can increase social capital, and Irish bloggers are clearly benefiting from this.

The Internet poses unique information privacy threats. Once information is recorded online it rarely disappears. It has permanence, and the individual the information belongs to can in many cases have no power to decide what happens to it.

During this research it was assumed that non-bloggers would indicate higher levels of concern with regard to issues of online privacy and the persistent nature of the Internet, in comparison to the bloggers. What was actually found was that both bloggers and non-bloggers have similar levels of concern about online privacy. 48.93% of the total participant sample indicated they were “concerned” and 16.87% indicated that they were “very concerned” about online privacy. However, there was a significant difference found between scores for concern about online permanence. 46.07% of non-bloggers indicated that they were “concerned” and 13.48% were “very concerned”, in comparison 36.48% of bloggers said they were “concerned” and 10.66% said they were “very concerned”.

Results indicate that Irish bloggers are not overly concerned about their published materials remaining online indefinitely, but Irish non-bloggers are, and this was one of the only differences found between the two groups. Concurrently bloggers were also asked how concerned they are with the possible misuse of information on their blogs, with over 38% indicating that they were concerned and 10% saying that they were “very concerned”.

The majority of the sample had 10 years or more experience online, but both bloggers and non-bloggers had very similar levels of experience – indicating that online experience is not a key indicator for participation in writing a blog, but is more likely to be an indicator of awareness of the medium. Correspondingly, computer skill levels were found to be similar in both bloggers and non-bloggers.

However, it was also found that bloggers are no longer primarily based in the Information Technology sector (as was the case in 2006) with less than 30% of bloggers coming from IT, almost 17% coming from the Media sector, 9% from the Education sector, and the remaining 56% coming from a variety of different areas e.g. Retail, Government, and Arts/Design etc. Additionally only 20% of the non-bloggers were based in IT. This suggests that exposure to the medium is not reliant on an individual being in involved with IT.

As part of the M.Sc. in Cyberpsychology I conducted a research study focusing on Irish bloggers and Irish internet users that read blogs. A third of this research involved an extensive review of past psychological research on blogging, collating available statistical data with regard to Irish internet user behaviours and information regarding Irish blogging. Based on this detailed literature review and extensive consultation with both bloggers and non-bloggers a questionnaire was created and in January of this year the survey was published online, gathering 422 participants – 244 bloggers and 178 non-bloggers.

This research is the first to investigate the psychological areas of interest surrounding blogging applied to an Irish audience, and is the first in-depth study of Irish blog authors; additionally it is the first study of Irish blog readers. The results constitute an additional step toward understanding Irish bloggers, and suggests only slight differences between those who blog and those who read blogs but do not blog themselves. Based on the results gathered additional studies with regard to any cultural differences between Irish bloggers and international ones could be ascertained. The strengths of this study lie in its large sample size and the flexibility of the questionnaire itself, where participants had the option of inputting rich qualitative data.

The overall aim of this research was to explore the perceptions, attitudes and behaviours of Irish bloggers and non-blogging Irish internet users that read blogs. Attitudes to the issues surrounding blogging – trust, honesty, liability, privacy and permanence, were explored. Writer’s behaviours with regard to identity, motivations, and socialisation were investigated. Perceptions of the credibility and popularity of blogging in Ireland in comparison to other countries was investigated, and readership behaviours – frequency and origin of blogs read, were examined.

Over the next few days I will be publishing summaries of the most interesting findings, and the entire research document is now available via email request.

Though I had planned on publishing the document online I am currently writing a journal article for possible publication and therefore must wait until this process is complete before publishing the entire document online.  Participants that requested to be contacted when this research was available online will be contacted when all of the blog posts related to this research are published here.

An abstract (a very short summary) of the research is available here.