Social identity development through blogging

Blogs, one of the latest emerging tools for communication, are gaining widespread popularity and becoming increasingly common. More and more people blog and use blogs as a way to share information about themselves with other participants or viewers. By doing so, they create their so-called 'virtual self. 810g was chosen to be the main theme of this study not only because of its increase in user number but also its uniqueness that differentiates it from other types of online communication. This study explores social identities in blogging communities. It argues that, though the use of Slogs has been studied, emphasis has remained primarily on its types and features, rather than on how it can create social identities. This research investigates how social identity is formed and developed within blogging communities, how people present themselves in virtual communities by using blogs and how the social identity of individual bloggers influences and is being influenced by the blogging community. In addition, this study also investigates how braggers' identities have changed over time. The result shows how individual members present their identities through different roles and how these roles change over time. These issues are explored in selected bragging sites by using participant observation as the main method of data collection, and allowing the researcher to gain rich data. The collected data includes logs based on observations, together with 40 bloggers' interviews. This resulted in an extensive amount of data being gathered, which was analysed, categorised, interpreted, and summarised in relation to the framework of the study. The findings from this interpretive work were used to develop the understanding needed to answer the research questions in the form of confirming, expanding and strengthening the conceptual framework of the study. In addition, analysis reveals that social identities are created in blogging communities while bloggers adopted different types of social roles within online communities, and these have an effect on members as well as on the community in general.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo