The journal blog: a traditional form mediated by the Internet

Blogs are a little more personal, and the etiquette is less defined: if a [bulletin] board is like a party, is a blog like your living room? A booth at a street fair? I think it's like a front porch: it feels like a part of your house; you put furniture on it, plants. But it's right there on the street and the only thing stopping someone from walking away with your hanging ferns is social convention. The sense of it being private and owned, well, that's illusory. (The Leery Polyp, 1 February 2005)

When is a diary not a diary? Perhaps when it's a blog. As we have seen, early bloggers tried to act as filters of the Internet, directing their readers to interesting information through links. Such links might be to other blogs or to different types of websites. The blogger sometimes offered commentary on the links and there was usually the possibility for the reader to make comments on the blogger's latest posting, but the focus of these early blogs was very much on their links. Such link blogs required a certain technical ability with computer programming, so it is not surprising that many of these early blogs were built around IT themes. Then in 1999 came the introduction of easy-to-use, cheap or free blogging software such as Blogger and the concomitant explosion of the blogosphere. Now it was possible for anyone to blog, despite their limited IT knowledge.

With the expansion of the blogosphere, link blogs were no longer the only type of blog available. In a report on blogging demographics for the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Lenhart and Fox (2006) stated that the most popular content for a blog was the writer's life and experiences, with 37 per cent of their sampled blogs focusing on these subjects. Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2009 reported that 45 per cent of respondents blogged primarily about 'personal musings' - with this figure rising to 53 per cent for the 72 per cent of respondents defined by Technorati as 'hobbyist' bloggers (as opposed to professionals and would-be professionals who expected to make money from their blogging).

The newer style of 'journal' or diary blogs was characterised more by the frequently updated text in the blog than by links to other parts of the Internet and was more likely to be focused on the blogger rather than external links. Indeed, Herring et al. (2004a) sampled 203 US journal blogs and discovered that only 31.8 per cent contained any links at all. Their research also suggested that journal blogging appeared to be particularly attractive to women and teenagers. Van Doorn et al. (2007) also made this link and suggested that in the journal blog we are confronted with an intersection between the traditionally feminine act of diarywriting and the traditionally masculine environment of ICT.

Blogs sit on the cusp of the public and private spheres in a unique way, with bloggers writing for both themselves and their audience. A blog is neither a completely private diary nor a polished and edited piece of writing aimed purely at a specific readership. Mortensen and Walker (2002) suggest that, just as Habermas conceived of the salon as existing on the borderline of the private and the public, situated in private homes but part of the public sphere, so do blogs. In his 2005 study of London bloggers, Reed made comparisons with street graffiti - the text left for strangers to read - or even just the act of standing on the street and shouting, exposing oneself through text to people you don't know. With their links to other parts of the Internet, blogs are anchored in the public sphere, and yet they are also safe spaces within which bloggers have total editorial control. It is therefore possible to compare blogs with other means of communication that appear to straddle both the public and the private sphere, such as letters to magazines or newspapers; the writings of some newspaper columnists; personal webpages and published diaries and letters.

The diary genre

Both the mainstream media and academic research frequently use the descriptions 'online diary' or 'journaling' to describe blogging. Such terms can be helpful to convey to readers who may never have seen a blog something of the quality of the genre. There is much that is familiar about a blog for a diary user - the chronological structure and the focus on personal experiences and opinions, particularly if the blog is a so-called 'journal' type blog. And it is not just commentators who associate blogging with diaries. As we have already noted, many blogging services such as Diaryland or LiveJournal make the connection too. But is a blog only an online diary, or does blogging offer its users more (communication with others; publicity) or less (lack of privacy; negative criticism) than a diary? In actual fact, there is a separate online diary tradition whose proponents can feel just as uncomfortable about being associated with blogging as bloggers can be when labelled 'diarists'. boyd (2005) expressed the frustrations of many bloggers when she described the use of such terms as misleading and problematic because, although they are not fundamentally wrong, they do not convey the full picture.

So how far are bloggers motivated to write their blogs because they see them as at least similar to the traditional diary? A Canadian living in London spent a good amount of time in her blog trying to work out precisely why she blogged, particularly because she is a television presenter and so as a public figure has issues about a possible invasion of her privacy. In one post, she described how she used to keep a diary from the age of 12, but stopped writing it ten years later when it was read by someone she thought she could trust. So, if she had privacy issues about others reading her diary, why did she write a publicly accessible blog that could be read by family, friends and strangers all over the world? The answer is that, unlike her diary, her blog was designed to be read by others.

With blogging I can write a 'diary' with the intention of others reading it which a) satisfies my love and need to write b) in some way documents a bit of my life c) helps me reach a lot of people and d) is a bit of fun. (Gia's blog, 9 July 2002)

This description shows a classic mixture of motives for blogging and clearly demonstrates how, in the mind of a blogger, an online blog can differ from an offline, traditional, diary.

Researchers in the area of diary-writing (see McNeill, 2005; O'Sullivan, 2005; Serfaty, 2004) tell us that the origins of diary-keeping date to the early modern period in the West, with two significant factors being the spread of literacy and the impact of the Protestant Reformation. Not only were more people able to read, but silent reading became the norm, rather than reading aloud, which was more usual in the Middle Ages. It is suggested that silent reading helped the reader to meditate more clearly and in their own time on what he or she was reading and to form their own judgements. In the early modern period, both the Protestant and Catholic churches encouraged their congregations to read and meditate on the Bible and other devotional materials and to keep written accounts of their spiritual progress. Thus diary-keeping was very much seen as a spiritual and religious exercise. With the arrival of the Age of Science and the expansion of the theories and practices of accountancy and bookkeeping and also the growing popularity of the yearly almanac, diary-keeping also encompassed the more secular world, noting important events, natural occurrences and domestic affairs, although a bookkeeping methodology could also be extended to include the enumeration and analysis of sins and good deeds committed throughout a writer's day. The philosophers of the Enlightenment reinforced the secularisation of the diary genre, encouraging the further exploration of one's internal debates and deliberations through journaling.

By the nineteenth century, diaries had evolved into what O'Sullivan (2005: 60) calls 'sites of self-exploration, self-expression and self-construction'. The persona of the diarist was now the focus of the diary and the exploration of his or her character the main motivation for keeping a diary, although such introspection was frequently still of a confessional nature. Diary-keeping flourished with the sharp increase in literacy during the nineteenth century and the growth of the middle classes, particularly among middle-class women edged out of the public sphere and confined to the home with little to do but to write about 'what they knew' - in other words, their own lives and character. Girls, in particular, were encouraged to use diary-keeping as a means of self-discipline, and while a 100 per cent literacy rate was close to achievement in the UK by the beginning of the twentieth century, diary-keeping was still very much an upper- and middle-class occupation, and particularly associated with women and girls. This makes such diaries and personal reminiscences particularly helpful for those interested in researching what Jalland (1986) has called 'the history of the inarticulate' - conventional, middle-class women of the Victorian period. The last forty years have seen a tremendous growth in...