Blog on Blogging

After having a recent debate with friends over what we prefer from sleep or food, I decided to choose to blog about a sleep blog. I personally prefer my sleep to food... don’t get me wrong food is good, but sleep is that bit better. Although from the group of friends food was the favourite.

And so after researching I found a blog on sleep named The ‘Snoozester Sleep Blog’. (http://blog.snoozester.com/) It started in august, 2006 and consists of blogs based around sleep. The blog is not written by academics or sleep specialists, or even professional writes, it is just from people who like sleep. They post about sleep related issues such as ‘sleep studies and sleep-affecting medical conditions as well as air-conditioned pillows and a review of a mattress cover’.

Personally, I think this blog is good; it’s fun and very informative, more so that it has links to pages that are more academic and written by professionals in order for people to further their research.  It may not be academic but does refer you to academic links. It gives fun and interesting facts to know about sleep and so if ever I had the debate again I could back up my views with the blog.

When researching, researchers are open to the options they have and methods of which they can carry out research. In more contemporary research blogs have been used as a secondary source of research of which researchers would include in their research due to their popular nature. ‘Current estimates of the number of blogs online are varied... estimates are in the range of 2.8 million (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, 2006). According to Kothari (2004: 372), ‘researchers…have found electronic computers to constitute and indispensable part of their research equipment.’ She then goes on to mention the uses of the computer for data analysis and how these help researchers. This can be linked to the view of how society is reliant of technology and as for researchers it may be seen as a necessary tool. So by using blogs and collating data based on blogs this may be seen as functional for researchers in today’s society.

A positive issue raised when researching blogs, and using them as research methods, can be related to globalization. As technology is expanding vastly in the 21^st century, the internet is used more widely. More people blog on a daily basis and their thoughts are shared with the internet users worldwide. It is much more accessible for people to know the thoughts of a person who lives on the other side of the world. This is seen as a more practical method for researchers, as they dot have to travel the world to ask people their thoughts, when there is more than likely a blog post on such a topic from a country on the other side of the world. ‘Like the majority of online research strategies, they also enable access to populations otherwise geographically or socially removed from the researcher.’ (Hessler et al., 2003; Mann and Stewart, 2000)

The main use of blogs for researchers would be for them to treat them as diaries. Diaries as pieces of evidence in research are popular due to their validity. Diaries are seen as valid as people are more likely to tell the truth and not give bias information. Blogs are then seen as diaries and so provide more valid research for researchers. ‘Social scientists have used diaries as a technique for collecting data on daily life and as a means for understanding social actors both as observers and informants for social life.’ (Toms and Duff, 2002: 1233)

Unlike an interview blogs, do not give you the full picture, although a blog may relate to a research topic the researcher is interested in, the blogger may not have expanded on their views. Bloggers may not have been directed a question and so views may be limited on that topic. This may then lead researchers to want to find out more about why a person blogged what they did but may never be able to find out as you don’t have direct contact with the blogger. This could be seen as a problem as it limits the views and information given to researchers.

However when using blogs, there are many ethic issues that raise a concern. These relate around the nature of the blog and whether or not they are public or private and who do they actually belong to. Some researchers feel the need for consent while others do not. ‘Some researchers claim that online postings, though publicly accessible are written with an expectation of privacy and such be treated as such.’ (Elgesem, 2002; King, 1996; Scharf, 1999). I personally believe, along with some researchers that once posted onto the internet a blog is there to be seen by all, and so if not wanted to be private it would have specific requirements of access. However if not then this suggests to me that the writer does should not mind about consent. ‘There are researchers who argue that archived material on the internet is publicly available and therefore participation consent is not necessary.’ (Sudweeks and Rafaeli, 1995; Walther, 2002)

There are millions of blogs on the internet, however not all of them are seen as academic. Some blogs are for academic purposes as they may be part of a university degree yet others may be for personal preferences, where people may feel like sharing their own views on society with the rest of society. Some may blog about fashion, food and others about sleep. However academic or not blogs are seen as useful as it enables for researchers to gain people’s views on society. If not academic the data collected from the personal blog could then be used for an academic purpose.

http://blog.snoozester.com/