Blogs and Research

Research Application

Researching blogs can be complicated since it is difficult to trace the interconnected aspects of the blogosphere; however, approaching blog research with clear outcomes and an understanding of appropriate research techniques can facilitate the research process. The following methods, while not an exhaustive list, are the most common blog study approaches. Each method has positive and negative aspects to its use and can be better suited to particular research purposes and situations.

Social Network Analysis

Blogs are online communities of people with similar interests and a system of interacting friends and colleagues. As an interconnected community system, blogs are considered a social network similar to Facebook or Instagram. Because blogs are part of the larger social network sphere, SNA is the most commonly used research method for studying blogs.

SNA tracks participant relationships and the strength of those relationships by creating a visualization of points and lines. The points in SNA represent the individual and the lines represent the relationship between individuals. For example, SNA may be used to track the relationship between groups of bloggers writing about an upcoming election; the individuals’ blogging about the election become points on a graph and the relationship between bloggers become lines representing a connection.

SNA is beneficial to the study of blogs because it can take the complicated and seemingly unorganized nature of blogs, blog comments, and outside hyperlinks and help create a sense-making system. On one hand, SNA is useful for studying how individuals are affiliated in blog communities and how the affiliations affect one another. On the other hand, it can be difficult to find a way to track relationships. For example, when SNA is used to study blogs, researchers often track the use of hyperlinks to other blogs and websites; however, many of the links may not lead to a connection and tracing relationships becomes difficult.

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