According to its latest August 2005 report, Technorati tracks over 14.2 million blogs.

• The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months
• Over 80,000 blogs created daily
• About 55% of all blogs are active
• About 13% of all blogs are updated at least weekly

More results are promised on Technorati weblog later on.

Virtual ethnography can be a way to combine content (discourse) analysis and interviewing people.

Thomsen et al. (1998) discuss methods to study online (virtual) communities and argue that to be rigorous and valid, the research should "triangulate" discourse analysis and interviews. The discussion starts with a question "are virtual communities "real" communities," i.e. do they have dense, systematic interpersonal relationships between members. The authors refer to the literature (Rheingold, Oldenburg, Jones) to demonstrate that the number of those who think virtual communities are in fact communities is growing.

To study online communities as communities it’s necessary to re-define the following concepts: social interaction (physical co-presence is not necessary for intimate quality interaction,) social bonds (close personal relationships can be built over computer-mediated communication,) and empirical experience (virtual encounters are incorporated into people’s daily, lived experiences.)

If the assumptions about virtual communities are re-defined, it’s possible to study them using ethnography. The focus of ethnography shifts toward textual analysis but other characteristics of the method remain. The legitimacy of observations and results depend on the researcher’s ability to immerse him/herself in the world of the observed. Textual analysis alone without interactions with people is not enough. Therefore it’s necessary to adapt the strategies of participant observation and compliment the textual analysis with interviews. Principles of participant observation applicable to studying online communities: prolonged engagement, persistent observations, use of “insiders” or informants, development of trust (this may be hard when dealing with dissimilar people).

Conclusion: the study of online communities can be methodologically rigorous, we need more discussion to develop the method.

I’m either lazy or informationally overloaded. The MIT blog survey has been around for more than a month and I just noticed it (via Netwoman). I think I saw signs "I broke the power law" somewhere but just didn’t pay enough attention to figure out what it meant.

The goal of the survey is “to understand the way that weblogs are affecting the way we communicate with each other.” I’d say the survey may tell more about bloggers than blogs and how we communicate with each other. The sample consists of those who have blogs and most questions are about patterns of use, which seems to be a bit different from communication or interaction.

May be I don’t see the whole picture (so far one gets only partial results after filling out the questionnaire). But it seems that to be able to say how weblogs affect the way we communicate with each other, it is necessary to survey non-bloggers as well as to ask exact same questions about other types of communication (including off-line communication). It can be argued that bloggers are affected by blogs the most and that patterns of use can be revealing. Besides, I don’t know research questions. Still, I think there is some discrepancy between the goal and the way the survey was designed.

I’m not sure it’s possible to get to this solely by using the survey method but I’d probably like to get answers to the following questions (to name a few):

• If people spend more time on blogs, does it mean they spend less time on other kinds of communication (including f2f)? Do they become more isolated, confident, talkative, empathic?
• If people blog about personal matters, does it mean they stop writing about it in e-mails?
• For a non-blogger (as well as for a blogger), what does it mean to read other people’s blogs every day?
• How do people feel about commenting? What makes them to leave a comment? How many people prefer to remain anonymous and why?

It seems that the response rate was quite high for this survey, so it’s probably one of the first large surveys of bloggers. Regardless to the goal, full results and interpretations should be very interesting.

Almost a year ago Lilia (mathemagenic.com) had a post about why it's hard to blog in Russian. Among other things she mentioned the language of one's own professional community and the difficulties of writing for a non-existent audience. Clearly, I have the same problems. The language of my professional actitivities is English, the audience for sharing and exchanging is mostly English-speaking.

Nevertheless, I decided to start a journal in Russian. The idea behind my blog (journal?) in Russian is trivial: I want to keep up with what's happening on Russian internet (or Runet as we call it). And I hope that some kind of a community with similar interests, however small or invisible it may be, is out there.

I named it (simply and unpretentiously :) "Publichnaya kartoteka", which can be translated as "A public index card file." The word public ("publichnaya") in Russian contains the word "personal" (lichnaya), so it's a kind of public-personal card file. The idea of taking notes on index cards, filing and organizing them became very special to me because of two things:
- "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco
- Nabokov's method of writing on index cards and keeping them in a shoe-box (I read it in some interview with him but some people think it's Nabokov's evasive teasing)
Anyway, the medium might have its own effect but the inspiration comes from good old index cards. We'll see how it goes.

Browsing weblogs and digesting summer classes, I came up with another idea of why people blog.

According to Habermas, the social evolution can be characterized by the uncoupling of system and lifeworld. Initially conceptualized through the division of labor, systems are functionally specified domains of actions that contribute to the maintenance of society as a whole. Market, law and bureaucracy can be considered such systemic domains. The concept of lifeworld is described in Habermas’ “Theory of communicative action” as a cultural milieu, an implicit resource we draw upon to understand, communicate and act. It is “the intuitively present, … familiar and transparent, and at the same time vast and incalculable web of presuppositions that have to be satisfied if an actual utterance is to be at all meaningful, that is valid or invalid.” (p. 131) Habermas constantly emphasizes the “backgroundness” of the lifeworld, its taken-for-grantedness and the unquestionable nature.

During the social evolution lifeworld is not only uncoupled with system, it becomes an environment for system. In other words, it’s treated like a subsystem (e.g. like economics or politics). Power and money (called “media” by Habermas) replace language in communicative actions eliminating the chance to negotiate and criticize. Jobs and schools are parts of the system where power and money replace linguistic communication. We are paid for our work, placed on some step of a hierarchy and are obliged to follow formal rules. All decisions are made on the level of contracts, handbooks and formal policies and not through actual interaction and understanding.

The lifeworld is cut off from the system, it is mediatized and colonized by it. With the lifeworld cut off and colonized, the crises of meaning, identity and solidarity arise.

Blogging can be considered an attempt to reconnect with the lifeworld and a way to deal with crises. In some way, it is an attempt not to loose something important that can not be codified in regulations and laws but still can be misused and violated. Some unspoken lifeworld norms that promote mutual understanding and make individuals less alienated and hostile.

To generalize, do people blog because they miss authentic communication in some spheres of their life?