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Common Visual Design Elements of Weblogs Lois Scheidt and Elijah Wright

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Background

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Methodology <ul><li>Random sample of 154 weblogs collected September 21, 2003 </li></ul><ul><li>Collected from blog-tracking website http:// blo.gs / </li></ul><ul><li>Grounded theory approach was used to develop a coding scheme consisting of 23 elements </li></ul><ul><li>Coding categories are not exclusive </li></ul>

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Sex of authors <ul><li>Single author weblogs predominate in this corpus with 147 </li></ul><ul><li>Seven have two or more authors </li></ul><ul><li>48.3% of the single author weblogs have male authors </li></ul><ul><li>49.7% have female webloggers </li></ul><ul><li>Of the 7 multiple author weblogs; 2 have all male authors, 1 has all female authors, and 4 have both male and female authors </li></ul>

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0 video 0 music 0.60% custom cursors 0.60% custom calendar layout 1.90% scrolling headers 2.60% too wide 2.60% language 3.20% text effects 3.90% photo background 3.90% per-post icons 4.50% smilies 6.40% color clash 7.80% graphical dividers 7.80% graphical dividers 12.30% custom font 17.50% color bars 18.20% data representations 22.10% custom banner 24.70% custom table borders 33.80% color alteration 40.30% custom colors 41.60% color in headings/titles 43.50% custom images 51.90% CMC elements Incidence across all Weblogs Code

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Custom images <ul><li>Custom images were found in 43.5% of the weblogs analyzed </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Female webloggers posted 46.3% of the custom images </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Males utilized 47.8% of the images </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Images were posted on 4.5% of the weblogs being operated by multiple webloggers </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Unknown gender webloggers utilized 1.5% of the custom images in their weblog design </li></ul></ul>

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Colors in titles and headings <ul><li>Colors in titles and headings, any color other then black or white, are present in 41.6% </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Female webloggers utilized 40.6% of colored text headings </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Male webloggers used colors other than black and white in 51.6% of the weblogs </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Unknown gender webloggers and weblogs with multiple webloggers account for 7.8% of those using color in their text headings, 3.1% and 4.7% respectively. </li></ul></ul>

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Custom color text <ul><li>Custom color text was present in 40.3% </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Female webloggers used significantly more color with 58.1% of the weblogs displaying this customization </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Male webloggers used only 38.7% of the custom color </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Multiple weblogger weblogs used 3.2% of the custom color text </li></ul></ul>

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Custom table borders <ul><li>Thirty-eight (24.7%) of the weblogs had custom table borders </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Female webloggers displayed 57.9% of the custom table borders </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>While 39.5% were by male webloggers </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Multiple weblogger weblogs used 2.6% of the custom table borders </li></ul></ul>

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Color alteration <ul><li>Color alterations, changing the base color of a common weblog template, are present in 33.8% of the weblogs </li></ul><ul><ul><li>57.7% of the color alteration was used by female webloggers </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>40.4% was used by male webloggers </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>1.9% was used by webloggers of unknown gender </li></ul></ul>

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Custom banners <ul><li>Custom banners were present in 22.1% </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Female webloggers presented custom banners in 41.2% of the weblogs in the sample </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Male webloggers displayed the characteristic in 47.1% of the weblogs </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Unknown gender and multiple weblogger categories accounted for four custom banner weblogs (5.9% each) </li></ul></ul>

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Conclusion <ul><li>Individual webloggers do not tend to make substantive structural changes to the default layout of their sites </li></ul><ul><li>Design schemes are frequently minimally modified versions of templates provided by software selected by the end user </li></ul><ul><li>An overwhelming proportion of the customizations we observed came in the sidebar </li></ul>