Posted on Mar 30, 2009

IBR09: Introduction to the Irish Blogs Research Study

Cyberpsychology class of 2009

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.

Posted on Mar 14, 2009

Where’s Culture?

On a Sunday morning you can often hear the words “Where’s Culture?” in my house, the reply is so often “Well you won’t find any around here!” rather than something far less witty like “I’m not finished reading it, here, have News Review instead.” But who needs the Sunday Times anymore when you’ve got Culch.ie?

culch

It’s the new group blog on the block and it’s all about the pop culture. Coming to you from the most opinionated bunch of Irish bloggers around. With it’s baby daddy being none other than Rick O’Shea it’s already got a head start. In the first offical day alone it has amassed more than 100 comments. There’s some great posts about Watchmen already up, tons of movie news, a gorgeous poem, even *I* found the time to write a post or two and you can even find some Culch on twitter too.

Posted on Jan 29, 2009

Overwhelming Survey Response

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.

Posted on Jan 22, 2009

Do You Read Blogs? Do You Write a Blog?

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!

Ticket

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.

Posted on Dec 10, 2008

Q&A with PC Live

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.

Posted on Apr 29, 2008

Cyberpsychology Thesis on Irish Blogging

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?

Posted on Apr 29, 2008

Describe Yourself in 6 Words

Becs has “tagged” me… so I am required to describe myself in 6 words (either 6 individual words or a 6 word sentence) and then “pass it on” to other people (Liam, Darragh, David – you’ve been tagged!). This is my 6 word sentence:

“Wants to know something about everything.”

Posted on Mar 2, 2008

Irish Blog Awards Winners

The Dublin Community Blog posted the list of winners from last night. Here it is with links too.

I definitely think that Grannymar & Head Rambles (joint winners) deserved the award for Best Personal Blog, which was the category that this blog was nominated in. I’m also really glad that Sabrina Dent won Best Designed, because her blog is gorgeous! Well done to everyone.

Robin Blandford (winner of Best Irish Technology Blog) posted some pictures of the actual award, and it’s so very pretty.

Posted on Mar 1, 2008

Good Luck to Everyone at the Irish Blog Awards

The Irish Blog Awards are on tonight, good luck to everyone nominated. If you can’t make the physical event in the Alexander Hotel there is a Second Life party (formal attire please!) in the Dublin sim, in St. Stephen’s Green. This is tonight at 7.30pm. A big part of me (the shy part!) wishes I could go to the virtual party instead!

Kudos and thanks to Damien Mulley for applying his many skills to this.

Posted on Feb 12, 2008

IBA Best Personal Blog Shortlist

As some of you might have noticed I was nominated for a blog award (best personal blog), and I’ve been shortlisted. Overall this is very surprising – firstly, because I didn’t think I had many readers as I don’t get that many comments, just lots of lurkers! (maybe I should start using feedburner?), secondly because within that longlist there are many other blogs that I would have chosen over my own. I’m very flattered indeed, many thanks to the judges and Damien. Good luck to everyone nominated.

The shortlist of nominees for the Best Personal Blog

(*personal favourites of mine)

I’ve been blogging for a few years, but only started writing regularly over the last year. Thus, the Blog Awards has really piqued my interest this year (and not just because of the nomination!). For me the great thing about the Blog Awards is how so many non-blogging people that I know have started taking an interest (once coerced into visting the site!), and this is because the longlists provide a very interesting and quality insight into the Irish Blogosphere. For those of you reading that are unfamiliar with the many brilliant irish blogs out there, might I suggest visiting each of the nominees listed on Awards.ie and maybe even voting for your favourite once voting commences.