This document summarizes a qualitative methodology used to study personal blogs and social shaping in Italy. The researcher conducted exploratory research, participant observation at blogger events, and 26 semi-structured interviews with bloggers. Blog and social media analysis was also performed. Key findings included that blogs are shaped by their context of use; users act as both consumers and producers; and knowledge is shared both horizontally and vertically through blogs and their social networks. The researcher proposes further qualitative study of how social networks relate to blogs and mainstream media.

1. Personal blogs and social
shaping: a qualitative approach
ELISABETTA LOCATELLI
UNIVERSITÀ CATTOLICA DEL SACRO CUORE
DI MILANO
@WARM: Workshop on Advanced Research Methods –
Università “Carlo BO” - Urbino
30th September 2010

2. Blogs as User Generated Contents
 What are blogs?
Websites Personal
Web logs
Online organized in stream of
(diaries of
personal a news feed in
web
diaries chronological chronological
navigation)
reverse order reverse order
 Timeline
1997 1999 2003 2004 2006 2008 2010
First blogs First blogs Splinder Facebook Google buys Facebook August:
in USA in Italy MySpace Blogger success in Facebook is
Hi5 Italy the most
Twitter
LinkedIn visited
Netlog
website
Badoo

4. Methodology
 Objectives
 Investigate the microsocial processes of blog appropriation  focus on bloggers (blog owners).
 Understand blogs developement in Italy.
 Qualitative approach, focused on the context of use (Mason, 1996).
 Importance of following users in their practices to understand their “personal economies
of meaning” (Silverstone - Hirsch 1992).
 Mix of different methodologies, integrated and not “balkanized” (Lievrouw – Livingstone,
2006)
 Focus onpersonal blogs.
 No triangulation of methodologies (Cardano, 2003) but multi-sited approach (Marcus, 1995).
 Field of research as a “field of relations” (Hine, 2000).
 Researched as a bricoleur (Denzin – Lincoln, 2000).
 Continuous comparison between hypothesis and data  hermeneutic approach and Grounded Theory
(Glaser, Strauss, 1967).

5. Methodology
Explorative research
Blog desk Participant
analysis observation
Semi-structured
interviews

6. Methodology
 (1) Explorative research  follow the “biography of the object”
(Kopytoff 1992) in USA and Italy
 Culural product as a key for a firts interpretation (Griswold, 1994; Colombo, 2001, 2003
 Articles, essays, books, blogs with blogs history in USA and Italy
 Archive.org
 Identification of three phases in Italian blogsphere (now updating):
 2000: Early blogger
 2003: Creation of Splinder
 2006: Google buys Blogger
 …?
 Need to meet blogger and their practices
 (2) Participant observation at three blogger events:
 VlogEurope, Milan, 18th-19th November 2006
 PiùBlog, Rome, 8th-10th December
 RomeCamp, Rome, 21° January 2007

7. Methodology
 Enter the field (Hine 2000; Roversi 2001)
 (3) 26 Semi-structured interviews (12
females e 14 males)
Snowball and theoretical
 Privileged instrument for exploring microsocial field of
blog incorporation into daily practices (Silverstone sampling;
1992) and its “subjective meaning” (Roversi 2001) both Three cities (Milan, Rome;
at a material and symbolic level.
Turin);
 Exploration of feelings, perceptions, and images of blog
use (also done with the request of drawing their own’s Divided into the three
blog image) phases;
 (4) 50 Blog analysis (26 males and 24
females)
 Textual analysis with a semiotic grid (Cosenza 20062)

8. Results
 A double structure (Cfr. Hine 2000):
 Artifact
 Context of communication
 Strong interaction between
 Individuals
 Technology
 Social discourse
 Blog as a “boundary object” (Star - Griesemer 1989)
 Blogger as a “processor” able to convert a technological infrastructure in
social and cultural values (Silverstone - Hirsch 1994)
 Social Shaping of Technology as a theoretical framework for
comprehending the results.
 MacKenzie e Wajcman 1988
 Bijker et al. 1989
 Bijker 1995
 Fulk 1993; Schneider 2000

9. Results
 Blog as a “configurational
technology” (Fleck 1988):
 Its elements are shaped in the context of use
 Interpretive flexibility (Williams – Edge 1996)
 Material (script);
 Symbolical (meaning)
 User as prosumer (Toffler 1987):
 Consume and active production of contents
 Knowledge distribution:
 Horizontal (peer to peer)
 Vertical (groups; “opinion leaders”; experts)
 Closure
 Early blogger and relevant social groups
 Relevant institutional subjects
 Importance of imagination in
technology adoption and use

10. Going further: social networks
 Two qualitative research on social networks:
 Qualitative analysis (ethnography) of 6 profiles (3 male; 3 females) of
social networks profiles of social media heavy users (Facebook, Twitter,
FriendFeed + blog)
 50 telephonic interviews to young adults (19-15 years old) about new
media appropriation (mobile phone, IM, SN, blog) + social network
profiles analysis (cfr. www.testimonidigitali.it and Giaccardi 2010
forthcoming).
 Social networks are similar to blogs:
 Open (although less flexible in some case) structure;
 Need of user to close it;
 Performing elements;
 Role of the institutional subjects in the space definition;
 Relevance of the year of adoption on the meaning attributed to the
social network.

11. Methodological issues
 Blog and social networks as both objects and
instruments of research
 Becoming “friend” of the panel (?)
 Privacy (?)
 Accountability (?)
 Contextualization of profiles and contents
 Focus on subjects
 Mix different methods of research  “Multimodal methodology”
(Dicks 2006)
 Sample
 What about the relationship between blogs and social
networks and blogs and mainstream media?
 4° stage of development?

12. Thanks for your attention
elisabetta.locatelli@unicatt.it
theblogup.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/elisabettalocatelli
twitter.com/donnabetta

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