China Blog Research Center talked about our study (in Chinese)

China Blog Research Center recently talked about the results of our blog survey in its website:
http://research.blogchina.com/1820345.html

UC Irvine ブロガー・アンケート結果

日本人だったら、moondialのﾌﾞﾛｸﾞを見てください：

http://moondial.blog2.fc2.com/blog-entry-97.html

博客调查的结果

我们的博客调查的结果发表在两篇国际会议论文中(2005国际社区与技术大会, 2005国际社会智能设计大会)。你可以在下面下载这两篇文章（英文）。简单的说,这两篇论文从以下四个方面比较博客社区:积极性,声誉,社会联系性,身 份。第一篇论文比较不同文化背景下的博客社区，第二篇论文比较不同主题类型的博客（政治与个人）。比如，在第一篇论文中，我们调查研究发现日本博客比其他 国家的博客更注意隐藏他们的真实身份。在第二篇论文中，我们调查发现政治博客比个人博客具有更强的社会联系性。如果你只想知道一个大概，那么你可以只读论 文的介绍和结论部分（就像绝大多数研究人员那样）。

这份问卷调查的准备离不开我们聪明的伙伴们：Jon Froehlich, Brandon Herdrick, Xuefei Fan, Kelly H. Kim，Louise Barkhuus。我们都是戈丽亚博士所教授的数量统计课的一部份，我们之间的合作十分的愉快。最后，我们特别要感谢帮助我们宣传这个问卷的朋友和所有博客朋友们，你们反馈的意见和建设性的批评使我们受益匪浅。

如果你对我们的博客调查有任何的疑问，请先从我们的两篇论文中寻找答案。如果你仍有任何的意见或问题，请在这里留下你的意见，或是直接写电子邮件给我们：normsu or yangwang [at] ics [dot] uci [dot] edu。我们将在这里或通过电邮回复你。

海内存知己，天涯若比邻：博客是一个全球社区吗?
作者：Norman Makoto Su, Yang Wang, Gloria Mark, Tosin Aiyelokun, Tadashi Nakano

摘 要：基于因特网的信息通讯技术如用户网，网络聊天，多用户网络游戏已经使虚拟社区成为现实。然而，一种新的技术形 式，网罗日志（网志或博客）已经迅速成为一种自我表达和跨越地域分享知识的方式。以前的研究主要侧重于西方国家的博客，我们的调查却是面向全球的博客社 区。之前的研究发现技术的使用因文化背景而大不相同。在这个发现的启发下，我们做了一个问卷调查旨在探索地域的文化对全球博客社区的影响。我们提出这个研 究的问题：是博客所在的地域文化，还是一个“全球化”的因特网文化，会对博客对于博客社区的感受影响大一些？我们在全球范围内开展了一个多语言的网络调 查，我们收到了来自全球四大洲的1232个有效回复。我们虽然发现微小的差别存在于东西方的文化下，但是大体的说全球的博客社区却被一个因特网文化所统治，因为没有跨文化的显著差别（注意：这里的差别大小是基于统计意义上的）。然而，一个重要的特例是日本博客特别注重隐藏他们的真实身份。

博客中一如往常的政治
作者：Norman Makoto Su, Yang Wang, Gloria Mark

摘 要：近几年来，网罗日志（或称博客）的崛起，正在改变人们在因特网上的交流。政治主题和个人主题的两种博客变得格 外的流行。这两种类型的博客都形成了作者与读者的社区。在这篇论文中我们研究社区这个概念是如何在这两种博客中被表达的。我们比较这两种博客在社区方面的 区别。我们侧重于有关社区的四个方面：积极性,声誉,社会联系性,身份。我们在全球范围内开展了一个多语言的网络调查，我们收到了来自全球四大洲的1232个有效回复（其中有121个政治博客和593个个人博客）。我们在这两个类型的博客中发现了显著差别（注意：这里的差别大小是基于统计意义上的）。

Blog Survey Findings

The blog survey has resulted in two published papers for 2005, one in the Communities and Technologies (C&T) conference and another in the Social Intelligence Design (SID). You can download the full papers (pdf) below. Briefly, both papers compare blogging communities on four dimensions: activism, reputation, social connectedness and identity. The C&T paper compares blogging communities from different cultures, while the SID paper compares across genres (political versus personal). So for example, a question we addressed in the C&T paper was whether bloggers in Japan, for example hide their identity on blogs more readily than bloggers in other countries (yes). A question we addressed in the SID paper was whether political bloggers are more social connected than personal bloggers (yes). If you just want a quick summary, read the introduction and conclusion (most researchers do the same anyways).

The survey development process would not have been possible without some very smart people: Jon Froehlich, Brandon Herdrick, Xuefei Fan, Kelly H. Kim and Louise Barkhuus. They were all part of a quantitative statistics class taught by Gloria, and it was truly an enjoyable experience to work with them. Finally, I want to especially thank all the bloggers who took time out to answer unsolicited emails from annoying graduate students. Many of your provided us insightful advice and constructive criticism.

If you have any questions, please first refer to the full papers. If you still have comments or inquiries, please don't hesitate to leave a comment here, or email us directly: normsu or yangwang [at] ics [dot] uci [dot] edu. We'll address your issues here or by email.

A Bosom Buddy Afar Brings a Distant Land Near: Are Bloggers a Global Community?
Norman Makoto Su, Yang Wang, Gloria Mark, Tosin Aiyelokun, Tadashi Nakano

Abstract. Information communication technologies on the Internet such as Usenet, Internet relay chats and multi-user dungeons have been used to enable virtual communities. However, a new form of technology, the weblog, or “blog”, has quickly risen as a means for self-expression and sharing knowledge for people across geographic distance. Though studies have focused on blogs in Western countries, our study targets the global blogging community. Inspired by previous studies that show significant differences in technology practices across cultures, we conducted a survey to investigate the influence of regional culture on a blogging community. We asked the research question of whether bloggers are more influenced by their local cultures with respect to their sense of community, or rather whether a “universal” Internet culture is a stronger influence of community feeling. Our results, based on a multilingual worldwide blogging survey of 1232 participants from four continents show that while smaller differences could be found between Eastern and Western cultures, overall the global blogging community is indeed dominated by an Internet culture that shows no profound differences across cultures. However, one significant exception was found in Japanese bloggers and their concealment of identity.

Politics as Usual in the Blogosphere
Norman Makoto Su, Yang Wang, Gloria Mark

Abstract. In recent years, the emergence of weblogs, commonly known as blogs, are changing the way that people interact over the Internet. Two particular kinds of blogs have become particularly popular—political and personal /hobby oriented blogs. Each of these types of blogs foster a community of readers and writers. In this paper, we investigate how the notion of community is expressed through these two blog genres. We examine the differences between community aspects in political and personal blogs. We focus on four dimensions that are associated with community: activism, reputation, social connectedness and identity. Our results, based on a multilingual worldwide blogging survey of 121 political and 593 personal /hobby bloggers from four continents show significant differences in blogging practices across these genres.

Monster Blogs

A big thanks to kotori (which means "little bird" in Japanese) for mentioning (babelfish translation link) our survey. When I emailed him about the blog survey, he mentioned that his site is a "monster blog". So that's what popular blogs are called in Japan? I suppose terms like blogerrati (i.e., celebrity or popular bloggers) are not extensively used in Japanese.

Are there other unique terms you know of for popular blogs/bloggers around the world?

Here is our current tally:

Japanese: 164
Chinese (simplified): 124
Chinese (traditional): 33
Korean: 22

We'll soon be collecting the data and then start the hard fun part...analysis.

Chatango

I've added a link to the left so that you can chat with me if I'm online.

Sending International Email

Its always great to get email from bloggers about what they think of our survey.

moondial told me:

In that case it would be best to write this message in Japanese with its subject line also in Japanese; most of the virus protection software settings over here throws away messages only in single-byte alpha-numerals. Likewise, many blogs do not accept alpha-numerals only comments, as many are sent in by spammers.

I have a nagging fear that all the emails I've been sending to Asian language speakers have been forwarded to /dev/null due to spam filters. Egads! All that wasted effort. Also, what encoding do I use for emails? I've always loved utf-8 for its uniformity, but perhaps not all mail readers support it.

As I mentioned before, blogging != diary:

I myself consider blogging tool set to be a handy contents management system rather than a journaling medium, and consequently my entries are more or less a collection of little essays each focusing on a particular topic. And therefore my, weblog has a considerably small readership.

I think blogging is also attractive because of its slightly voyeuristic angle. Its what drives intelligent people to watch stupid people do stupid things on (reality) television. But, I think blogging is set apart in that mundane events are common. Mundane to them, but nevertheless comforting to know that someone else out there has nothing to do on a Friday night.