Thursday, October 7, 2010

The Psychology of Blogging

Who blogs? Everyone! What are they blogging about? Everything! Why do they blog? Not so easy to answer! The reason the last question doesn’t have a straight-forward answer is because there are numerous reasons why we blog. The five most commonly studied motivational factors for blogging are: to create a journal that documents your life; to provide commentary and opinions; to express deeply felt emotions; to articulate ideas through writing; and to form and maintain community forums. Passing time, entertainment, and medium appeal were also discovered while conducting research on blogging motivators. As you might expect, one’s personality plays a very active role in blogging. My paper will discuss the personality types that tend to forecast blogging behavior. The “Big Five” as researchers like to refer to them as are: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The paper will also briefly skim the role gender plays in blogging in an attempt to answer the following question: What can we see through the lens of blogging?

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