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Abstract
The Internet offers a plethora of venues for autobiographical self-representation: webcams, personal websites, blogs. There is much research on self-representation online, whereas very little research has focused on the consumption of online self-representation. This article focuses on the act of reading diary blogs. Who are the actual readers of a specific blog and what values do they place on the event of reading? What draws them to the diary site in the first place and what mechanisms make them return? To attempt to uncover the reading practices involved for readers of diary weblogs I have conducted an explorative web survey on “how/when/why we read weblogs” on four independent diary blog sites kept by women in their 30s. The consumption of these blogs seem to be severely circumscribed by notions of sameness: based on gender, age, place of living, race/ethnicity, educational level. Readers report being drawn to the diary blog for the rhythm of serial autobiographical consumption and the possibilities of identification. They report looking for “likeness” in the first place. The lure of identification might always have led readers to autobiographical writing. Yet, these diary weblog readers, who in the main self-identify as female, report feeling heightened senses of identification by the proximity in time between the scenes of production and the scenes of consumption and by the deferral of the notion of an ending. This article explores the discursive connections made between the serial, the longitudinal, the consistent, and the construction and consumption of recognizable female selves.
Notes
1. In their random sample of blogs collected from March to May of 2003 (excluding from the data collection major diary hosting sites such as LiveJournal.com and Diaryland.com) 70.4 percent were diary weblogs, 12.6 percent filter blogs, 3.0 percent knowledge blogs, 9.5 percent mixed, 4. 5 percent other (Herring et al. Citation2004a).
2. Hochman's New York Times article “Mommy and (Me)” (Citation2005) is a recent telling example from the popular press. In his article, Hochman concludes that parents, mothers in the main, blogging about their daily child raising experiences are merely attention and validation seeking.
3. Weblog reading tools that enable readers to subscribe to blogs rely on RSS, “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary.”