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Irish Blog Research 2009, Survey Closes

Thank you to everyone that filled out my research survey. The response rate was double what I had hoped for and I’m really looking forward to analysing the data. Thank you so much to everyone that posted links to the survey on their own blogs, who retweeted it on twitter and emailed it to their friends. Thanks to Sabrina Dent for all her great ideas ideas (that definitely worked!), to all my tweeties that helped pilot study the survey and thanks to Irishblogs.ie for highlighting the research for me.

As Promised, Prizes at the end of the Rainbow

The winner of the first €50 voucher prize draw is Claire of Gingerpixel Photography.

The winner of the second €50 voucher prize draw is Barry James of Redbird Property & Maintenance. Who also has, quite possibly, the best twitter picture I’ve ever seen.

Irish Blog Research 2009, Survey Goes Live

As part of the M.Sc Cyberpsychology at IADT each postgraduate student is currently in the process of conducting a major research project. My own is focused on blogging, but from an Irish perspective, looking at the attitudes and behaviour of Irish bloggers and Irish blog readers. (Related Article)

Online Survey

At the very heart of this research study is an online survey which you can find here. I’m hoping to recruit a large sample of both bloggers and non-blogging readers. If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you fit into one of these categories and would very much appreciate it if you could spare 10-15 minutes to fill out the survey. Most of the questions are multiple choice, a small number are essay based but you can write as much, or as little as you like. This questionnaire is 100% anonymous, confidential and for research purposes only.  Even your IP address won’t be stored.

Prize Draws!

At the end of the survey you will have the opportunity to enter a prize draw for either a €50 Amazon voucher or a €50 Ticketmaster voucher – if you win, you can choose either prize.

I’m also going to run a separate prize draw for another €50 voucher for anyone that posts a link to this survey on their blog, or on a messageboard – anywhere really! To enter this separate draw just leave a comment on this blog post, this can be in the form of a trackback or a comment telling me where you have posted the link.

Thank You!

Thank you in advance for your help, without the Irish blogging community on my side this research won’t be complete. The hard part will be finding non-blogging readers to complete the survey, so if you know anyone that would fit that category please pass the link for the survey onto them.

As a way of giving something back to the blogging community I will be publishing summaries of the most interesting findings here on this blog. If you would like to be notified when the entire research document is available for download  – this will be a masters thesis of approximately 15,000 words, with an introduction to the psychogical aspects of blogging – you can enter your details on this form.

My current assignment for the Applied Cyberpsychology module is to develop a wiki. Which I finished working on last night. The criteria was that it had to in some way incorporate a topic in organisational or educational psychology. So I decided to create a wiki for students, that taught them about group work and also how to best use the Internet as a tool for collaborating online. I called it Project Spaces and you can find it here.

At first I was against the idea of creating a wiki by myself, and argued with the lecturer with regard to this. Part of this project involves asking the target audience (i.e. students) to view the wiki, and ask them about it’s usefulness. It was suggested that the individuals that were invited to view the wiki would naturally add content to it, and thus the wiki would mature. What I’ve actually found is that I might have done too much work and have been told that it reads like a complete wiki. I hadn’t expected that, but I guess I’ll just have to write that into my reflective essay.

Niall Kitson from PC Live! does a “Blogger in Profile” feature every month, Alexia Golez and Anthony McGuinness have gone before me and the December issue was my turn. So, here is an unedited (thus far longer, because I can’t shut my mouth) version of the Q&A.

You decided to study bloggers and their readerships for your post grad. What have you learned so far?

At the moment I’m still in the preparatory stage of my research. What this basically means is that I’m reading almost every single piece of literature already written about blogging, knowledge sharing and the social psychology on the internet. That last one is probably the one that stands out the most because blogging can be extremely social. Blogs have this amazing potential to offer social support, friendship and positive interactions through feedback from readers. Blogging has genuinely had a  positive impact on many bloggers lives, because feedback can serve as an acknowledgement of your thoughts, emotions and sense of self. Then of course there are the bloggers that blog to share their knowledge, instead of their lives. Sometimes this is done because of the positive effects upon reputation and sometimes it is a purely altruistic act. It’s fascinating.

Right now I’m looking at the possible cultural differences in blogging practices. The reason I’m looking at this is because I’m curious as to why blogging is huge in other countries and yet seemingly low profile here in Ireland. Though, I do believe in quality over quantity, that is to say that  the majority of Irish blogs are either very well written or incredibly entertaining. It has been suggested that poor broadband penetration is a key aspect as to why the adoption of blogging has been slow, but today over a million  Irish Internet users have access to a broadband connection, and we have become a nation of social networkers, photo-sharers and you-tube watchers It’s simply not a valid argument any more. I’m hoping my research can shed some light on the matter.

As a community what do you think of the Irish Blogosphere?

The Irish Blogosphere isn’t the first online community that I’ve interacted with. Over the years I’ve been a member of numerous web forums and long ago even usenet groups. The biggest difference, for me, was how quickly I began feeling like a member of the Irish blogging community. With other online groups it took months of interactions online before I started feeling like a member of the in-group. No heckling of the newbie occurs and there are no obvious exclusive cliques, though there are members that would be thought of more highly that others. Flaming is very rare. There are debates and discussions, but it rarely gets personal, which is something that can turn many people away from web forums – that fear of being ostracised. The thing that stands out for me about the Irish blogging community is their ability to offer support to one another without hesitation. Be it technical, informational, or even emotional.

Your writing demonstrates a real creative streak but you keep your content factual. Have you been tempted to post some fiction?

Any student of a Psychology will tell you that the biggest lesson you learn in college is to write objectively, and to always be able to back up any argument with valid and reliable facts. It can be difficult to separate my academic self from my writing, and if I post an article that in essence is my actual opinion on something, I will always back it up with solid facts. Maintaining a high level of quality and keeping with the theme of my blog is important to me, this is one of the reasons I don’t post articles on a daily basis. I have, however, tried to incorporate a few personally orientated posts, and I find this quite rewarding in itself. More recently I’ve been channelling my own creativeness into a separate blog project, related to poetry and photography. It’s not unnatural for bloggers to have more than one blog and I have done this to provide myself with a separate, non-serious vehicle online.

Are blogs really breaking the web?

Blogs might not be breaking the web, but I certainly don’t think they could be considered a replacement to websites or even wikis, as a source of information. The software behind blogging is temporal in nature, articles are displayed in reverse chronological order, so the first blog post an reader sees is the most recent one and navigation usually relies on moving backwards through these time-stamped entries. Blogs are great when used as a companion to a website, but relying on a blog to post articles that should or could be re-read, and would have context no matter what year or month they are written in, can mean that they don’t get re-read and instead get lost inside archives. However there are exceptions to this rule, and having a very well designed blog can counteract this. Relying on standard blog templates or free blogging websites such as Blogger.com is not the way to go, unless of course you’re planning on writing a diary style blog.

In the field of cyberpsychology whose work would you recommend to a friend?

The two subjects that are most interesting to me, that relate to the combined field of Psychology and Technology e.g. what is now referred to as Cyberpsychology, are the social Psychology of the Internet and Human Computer Interaction. The researcher who has had the most influence on me in both of these subjects is a Dr. Jennifer Preece from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Much of her work highlights the importance of good usability and design to facilitate the creation of successful online communities. She has also co-authored numerous books related to Human Computer Interaction, a subject that is concerned with making technology more usable and accessible to everyone – something I feel very passionate about.

For anyone interested in the field of Cyberpsychology I can also recommend the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, published online four times a year, many of the research pieces published can be freely accessed and offer many interesting insights into online behaviour.

IADT offers both a certificate in Cyberpsychology and an intensive Masters program. These courses are open to individuals with no background in Psychology, and cover areas ranging from e-learning, to online addictions and therapy. I can’t recommend the course enough, and think it would be great for anyone working in all aspects of the technology sector. It would also perfect for graduates of Psychology or Psychiatry that wish to learn how to apply these fields to our modern technologically bound world.

There’s a big emphasis on the importance of public speaking when you’re studying in college, despite the fact that you don’t often get the opportunity to speak in front of anyone else but your classmates. Which is something I had to do on Saturday morning to a mixed crowd of 1st and 2nd year M.Sc Cyberpsychology students, and lecturers who were there to grill and grade.

I don’t suffer from anxiety or panic when it comes to public speaking. Admittedly, I get nervous, palms do sweat and cue cards get shuffled compulsively. But after the point of introducing myself I often feel like I’m having an out of body experience, like I’ve no control over what’s happening, my mouth is a tap and words are dripping out, fast. On Saturday I felt this more acutely than ever before, despite the fact that I’ve presented at a conference to twice as many people and just recently presented a report to the managing director of a company (and his posse of suits) I was hoping to work with.

The experience I had on Saturday consisted of my mind tricking myself into believing I had completely fucked up the presentation, that I’d skipped slides and mumbled incoherently. But on the outside, according to those who watched, I was cool, calm and collected. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have believed them but then I was reminded of the presentation we did last year. As with all our college presentations they are filmed for the external examiners. The video of last years presentation was shown in the Psychology lab a few weeks ago, watching it I felt like it was a different person on the screen. The girl on that video was an alternative universe me, knowledgeable, confident, calm and capable of handling the most difficult of questions.

I’m my biggest critic. I feel like I have to be, because I know that the people who love me could never point out my flaws for me. So despite my supposed calm exterior whilst presenting, afterwards I always feel like I could have done better, and that I should have been more in control. I think that’s an important thing to share, because I know so many people freak out over public speaking, especially when their time slot is straight after someone that seemed so confident and together.

No one is immune to the pressure that comes with public speaking, some people are just better at hiding it.

Roblin Blandford had this great idea to input his CV into Wordle to create a tag cloud – which is a visual representation of the most commonly found words in a piece of text. In mine you can clearly see that the most dominant word is Psychology. You can click it for a bigger version. Elly has created one too.

Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT) are in the process of recruiting for the fifth year of the Create Digital Media business training and mentoring programme. Create seeks to train and mentor 10 entrepreneurs/employees of small companies on a part-time basis, for one day every month. It’s a 12-month government-financed programme that will train participants in further developing their digital media companies and they are particularly interested in individuals involved in e-commerce, online advertising, mobile media and social media.

Create also offers incubation desk space at the Media Cube on the IADT campus or at the Digital Hub in Dublin City Centre and each selected individual will be assigned an average of €10,000 for customised training and mentoring in business skills related to digital media development of companies, services and products. For more information, visit www.createireland.ie.

Having studied at IADT for 5 years I can’t recommend it enough to prospective students. I’ve always found the college overflowing with highly skilled, extremely engaging and approachable lecturers, who make the learning process effortless. IADT also offer a part-time post graduate programme in Digital Media, the MA/MSc in Digital Media which is currently taking applications.

At the start of March I seemed pretty intent on beginning an ambitious post graduate research paper on trust formation online. Since then I have done extensive research into the topic and had to narrow down my research area, this is of course due to time/resource constraints (and the discovery of a very similar study published just recently).

Whilst researching trust online, I was quite drawn to all of the research on blogs. The deeper I researched it on an international level (looking at American, Japanese and European literature) the more I realised how interesting it was that as a nation we have not embraced it. Especially considering the overwhelming statistics: In 2007 it was estimated that there were between 50 and 85 million blogs and at their current rate of growth, by 2010 there will be over 500 million blogs. Yet, it has been estimated that there are only about 3,000 or 4,000 Irish bloggers, in comparison to the 12 million bloggers in American or the 8 million bloggers in Japan. Even in the IT industry in Ireland, there is a severe lack of business blogging, despite the obvious benefits.

However, recent statistics published by Amárach claims that almost one in five Irish Internet users have started or contributed to a blog in the past year and if you look at the Alexa.com rankings, Blogger.com is the 10th most visited site by Irish Internet Users. Are there thousands more Irish bloggers out there? That are just unconnected to the blogosphere. Research has shown that some blogs are simply more connected to a blogosphere than others, with some not being connected at all. Or are Irish Internet Users bigger readers than writers? Research has shown that people are less likely to pay attention to a medium perceived as not being credible, and according to some reports trust in blogging in on the decrease (in Ireland) yet other reports show that the majority of Irish Internet users trust consumer opinions posted online.

There is a lot of conflicting data out there. So, naturally I’m fascinated.

I’ll be surveying Irish Internet Users (specifically bloggers and blog readers) to investigate their attitudes, perceptions and motivations, and comparing the results to existing international research. In order to interpret these results, I will also be applying existing social psychology, computer mediated communications and human computer interaction literature.

I’ll also be looking into issues of credibility, liability and the business implications (both positive and negative).

Any thoughts?

IADT are holding an open evening for prospective post graduate and mature students on this coming Thursday, the 24th of April. All the information is available here.

If anyone has an interest in the Cyberpsychology masters (or any of the IADT courses) the open evening would be the place to go. Especially since the course coordinator Dr. Grainne Kirwan will be there to answer all your questions, and so will some of the students from the course. If by any chance you cannot make it and still have an interest, I would be more than willing to answer any questions in the comments of this post.

In two weeks time I’m off to Limerick to attend the Congress of Psychology Students – this is an annual event where undergraduate and postgraduate psychology students (and sometimes their supervisors) present the research that they have conducted, usually in the last year or two. At this event two years ago I presented my own research, and plan on doing so once again at next year’s congress.

The congress is a wonderful opportunity to gather information about the current direction of Irish psychological research and based on the information from the timetable for presentations it appears that the majority of the research to be presented is coming from the traditional mainstream topics of scientific psychology. From almost 200 presentations taking place only about 10 of these are related to I.T in some way, which personally is a big disappointment, especially considering the ubiquity of communications technologies in Ireland and the number of I.T companies based here.

Applying psychological studies to technology has always been a niche in this country, which is surprising because it has so many positive and negative impacts upon Irish working life, home life, education etc. It is something that I feel passionately about, especially the importance of applying scientific methods to research in I.T – rather than the current climate of unreliable surveys and the media shaping public knowledge and ideas about how we use and interact with one another through technology.

I did however note an increase in the areas of research related to gay men and lesbians (though it is still a tiny percentage of the 200 presentations). There are of course many other areas of research that I have an interest in and below is a list of the selected presentations which I will aiming to attend.

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