Blogging as the new therapy? Study looks at weblogs as coping mechanism
By Erna Mahyuni
Blogging – some equate it as nothing more than letting the entire Internet into your journal.But weblogs seemed to become a point of fascination with psychologists as well, with a new study published in the Cyberpsychology & Behavior journal.
Ars Technica’s John Timmers finds the study, “Distress, Coping, and Blogging: Comparing New Myspace Users by Their Intention to Blog” by James R. Baker and Susan M. Moore, tantalising on the surface but ultimately flawed. Timmers concludes from his reading that “the survey results are suggestive and point out a few areas that might be worth additional study. Still, the data are a far cry from what you’d want to have if your intention was to draw general conclusions about the psychological makeup of bloggers.”
Who was the focus of Baker and Moore’s research? The two surveyed a group of new Myspace users asking them about their ‘intent to blog’ as well as other ‘psychosocial variables’. They concluded that those who intended to blog scored higher on the following: psychological distress, self-blame, and venting. These ‘intending bloggers’ also scored lower on social integration and satisfaction with number of online and face-to-face friends.
The two then make the hypothesis that “intending bloggers may view this activity
as a potential mechanism for coping with distress in situations in which they feel
inadequately linked with social supports.”
With only 134 surveyed, and limiting the focus group to Myspace users, the study ignores the vast majority of Internet users who choose to blog on their own sites and not via MySpace. It also doesn’t take into account that MySpace is most popular in the US with Friendster the preferred social networking blog platform in Asia.
Perhaps the more accurate description for this study would be “Trends for Myspace users pertaining to blogging”. Otherwise, the sample group is far too limiting to be applied to bloggers as a whole.
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March 11th, 2008
Yea I like totally like to rant all my personal stuff on the internet… it gives me a feeling of relief sort of like telling a philologist all my woes only I don’t have to pay them.
I started a web service where you can pay people .25 cents each to read your venting and then write something back to comfort you.
I got the site up and running and everything was fine until it became apparent that all the people leaving “comfort” messages back to the venter’s were just insulting them. Here is an example
Mary Stenson writes:
I am having so much stress at work, everyone I work with are all jerks and when I got home today my dog was dead.
Al Norton replies:
Your a faggot!
Steve Gerald replies:
I’m glad your dog is dead
Bill Kemar replies:
hahaha your life sucks you should probably kill yourself now
As you can see although a great idea for a service it didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped. So now I’m working on a site for people who want to be insulted… hopefully people won’t leave them positive comments this time around.
March 12th, 2008
I’ve come across a lot of people that use their blogs to talk about really personal stuff… and some of these people suffer from depression. Although they don’t have an official “blog”, I can see how “blogging” via Myspace, Facebook, or Friendster can relieve some of the symptoms of depression.
Erna, however, makes a great point in that this study didn’t really study bloggers but rather social network users that use their profiles to “blog” — or rant, complain, rave, whatever.
Also, the atmospheres of a social-network “blog” and a “real” blog are entirely different. Social networks automatically connect you with friends etc. so you automatically know your likely readers. A “real” blog doesn’t connect you with anyone automatically, and your friends are less likely to visit unless they’re into “real” blogging too — in which case the whole concept of the blogosphere comes into play, achieving a very similar result to a social network.