Why looking at practices of blogging is important in weblog research

Just an example of why looking at practices of blogging is important in weblog research.

Based on content analysis of random sample of 203 weblogs, Herring et al. (2004) conclude that weblogs are not as interactive as it is claimed. I think this conclusion is true for an “average” weblog, but I can not trust it because of the methodological flaw:

Interactivity of weblogs was measured based on number of comments to a weblog post. This may look like a perfect measure if you don’t know that some people prefer not to use comments, but instead react to a post in their own weblog and link back. These incoming links were not included in the analysis.

For me the fact that there are two options to comment in weblogs (actually more if you think of comments you receive by e-mail, but it’s another media ;) redefines what interactivity is.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/06/20.html#a1247; comments are here.

• KM bloggers community (2)
• 1/2 page description of my PhD research
• Social computing symposium: BlogTrace demo

Tagged as: blog conversations, blog research