Creating an educational context for Open Source Intelligence: The development of Internet self-efficacy through a blogcentric course

This paper examined the effects of a blogging centered curriculum on the development of Internet self-efficacy of students taking a general education class. The class used a hybrid model (in class and online) that both integrated and strongly encouraged blogging on a community style, open source blog. The curriculum was designed to both create a more distributed educational structure and to develop greater autonomy and participation in student activity. It was hypothesized that as students engaged in increasingly complex Internet activities they would develop greater strength in Internet self-efficacy in organization and differentiation of information and reaction to and generation of information. 367 undergraduate students participated in the current study. A pre-, post-test format was used to measure whether there were significant changes in strength of Internet self-efficacy, with the inclusion of a control group of a more traditionally-structured class. The results showed that a blogcentric course has impacts on the increases in students' Internet self-efficacy, particularly for reactive/generative self-efficacy. The findings are discussed in light of potential implications on the future direction of education.     

Blogging privacy management rule development: The impact of self-monitoring skills,concern for appropriateness,and blogging frequency

The current study utilized communication privacy management (CPM) theory to examine how individuals’ blogging privacy management rules are related to their communication-based personality dispositions (self-monitoring skills and concern for enacting socially appropriate interactions). The study also explored relationships between the same dispositions and blogging frequency. Overall, 356 bloggers completed an online survey instrument. Regression analysis provided support for both hypotheses. Bloggers with higher self-monitoring skills had a more private orientation towards their blogging privacy management practices. Bloggers’ CFA level was related to more public and open blogging permeability rules. High self-monitors and high CFA dispositions were positively related to blogging frequency. Implications of the study to current computer-mediated communication (CMC) theory and research are discussed.     

Why do women write personal blogs? Satisfying needs for self-disclosure and affiliation tell part of the story

Hierarchical OLS regression of survey results from a random sample of 312 women bloggers reveals a statistically significant positive relationship between need for self-disclosure and seeing blogging as a way to express one’s own voice, mediated by need for affiliation and time spent blogging. In essence, women with a strong need to self-disclose information about themselves are more likely than other women to say they blog to express their own voice in the blogosphere, compared with blogging to connect with other people or to gain influence in the blogosphere. In contrast, for women who blog to connect with other people or gain influence in the blogosphere, the strongest predictors is time spent blogging, not needs that motivated them to blog. Results are discussed in relation to need theory.     

Using blogging to enhance the initiation of students into academic research

For the net-generation students learning in a Web 2.0 world, research is often equated with Googling and approached with a mindset accustomed to cut-and-paste practices. Recognizing educators’ concern over such students’ learning dispositions on the one hand, and the educational affordances of blogging on the other, this study examines the use of blogging to initiate students into academic research at the tertiary level. It focuses on the experiences of three students from a third-year music class working on their research paper with blog-based supervision provided by the teacher. The course, in a hybrid fashion, combined face-to-face lectures and tutorials with blog sharing and discussion. The students’ individually-owned blogs were specifically used as their research diaries in which they logged in their work in progress, they then received input from both the teacher and fellow students. Based on the researcher’s self-evaluation of the teaching-supervising process, an analysis of the students’ blog discourse, and students’ survey feedback, this article offers useful insights and suggestions for educators interested in either using or researching on blogging as a means to develop students’ research skills and understanding.     

Students blogging about politics: A study of students' political engagement and a teacher's pedagogy during a semester-long political blog assignment

Many scholars have written about the Internet’s potential for engaging youth in public issues, but there has been little empirical research on the political engagement outcomes from students’ classroom-based use of web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, or the pedagogies involved in designing such experiences. This paper begins to address this gap by analyzing the development of political engagement among several dozen high school students who were required to complete political blogs for their required U.S. government course and by exploring their teacher’s pedagogical strategies and challenges. We analyzed data from 22 classroom observations, 15 student interviews, three teacher interviews, and surveys from over 300 students (including a large comparison group) given at the beginning and end of the fall 2012−13 semester. Quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate that students in the blog-focused classes developed greater political interest, internal political efficacy, and self-efficacy for political writing than other students. We also found that the teacher did not actively encourage interactive posting in order to avoid heated exchanges – but that many students expressed an interest in seeing more responses to their online writing. We discuss implications for practice and research.     

Information and communication technology and women empowerment in Iran

Since the introduction of the Internet in Iran, Iranian women have used this medium not only as a means of accessing and disseminating information but also as the means of voicing their concerns about discriminatory laws and to participate in public discourse. In Iran, the Internet provided a voice to repressed and marginalized groups, particularly young people and educated women. In 2003 the number of female Internet users in Iran reached a remarkably high proportion of nearly half (49%) of the total Internet users in the country, according to the International Telecommunication Union report (ITU, 2008). This constitutes a total of 11.5 million female Internet users in Iran which is the highest level of Internet penetration rate among Islamic countries in the Middle East. Since the first Farsi blog appeared online in 2001, thousands of weblogs have been created including blogs related to women’s issues in Iran. Blogging in Iran has helped repressed and marginalized groups reach out, including women’s and human rights activists, ethnic and religious minorities and Iranian youth to get their voices heard and to challenge the long standing univocal government and Islamic religious authorities. Women bloggers have been among the leading bloggers within the Iranian blogosphere. By applying the theory of social action and mobilization, this study finds that women’s digital activities prove to be an effective means of participating in communication discourse and mobilizing the female population of Iran in their struggle for a just and fair society.     

ArguBlogging: An application for the Argument Web

In this paper, we present a software tool for ‘ArguBlogging’, which allows users to construct debate and discussions across blogs, linking existing and new online resources to form distributed, structured conversations. Arguments and counterarguments can be posed by giving opinions on one’s own blog and replying to other bloggers’ posts. The resulting argument structure is connected to the Argument Web, in which argumentative structures are made semantically explicit and machine-processable. We discuss the ArguBlogging tool and the underlying infrastructure and ontology of the Argument Web.     

Who blogs? Personality predictors of blogging

The Big Five personality inventory measures personality based on five key traits: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness [Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Normal personality assessment in clinical practice: The NEO Personality Inventory. Psychological Assessment 4, 5–13]. There is a growing body of evidence indicating that individual differences on the Big Five factors are associated with different types of Internet usage [Amichai-Hamburger, Y., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2003). Loneliness and Internet use. Computers in Human Behavior 19, 71–80; Hamburger, Y. A., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2000). Relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and the different uses of the Internet. Computers in Human Behavior 16, 441–449]. Two studies sought to extend this research to a relatively new online format for expression: blogging. Specifically, we examined whether the different Big Five traits predicted blogging. The results of two studies indicate that people who are high in openness to new experience and high in neuroticism are likely to be bloggers. Additionally, the neuroticism relationship was moderated by gender indicating that women who are high in neuroticism are more likely to be bloggers as compared to those low in neuroticism whereas there was no difference for men. These results indicate that personality factors impact the likelihood of being a blogger and have implications for understanding who blogs.     

Blogging privacy rule orientations,privacy management,and content deletion practices: The variability of online privacy management activity at different stages of social media use

The purpose of this study was to examine social media users’ blogging privacy rule orientations, privacy management regulation, and content deletion practices as distinct types of activity occurring at different stages of the blogging process (before, during, and after blogging) that may aid in understanding the functioning of blogging disclosure activity overall. The study was guided by a complementary application of both the uses and gratifications perspective and communication privacy management (CPM) theory. A central tenet of both theories suggests that people are variably active in their communication behavior. We identified five discrete blogger privacy rule orientations explaining different online choice-making practices: the self-centric, the utilitarian, the planner, the protector, and the unworried orientations toward blogging. We also identified six different motives for deleting previously-posted information: conflict management, protection of personal identity/safety, fear of retribution, employment security, impression management, emotional regulation, and relational cleansing. Path analysis revealed several direct and indirect paths among bloggers’ motives for deleting previously posted material and their level of disinhibition, blogging privacy rule orientations, amount of time blogging, and privacy management practices. As use of social media increases, exploring variations in privacy management regulation practices is critical.     

Blog scrubbing: Exploring triggers that change privacy rules

An increasing number of individuals of all ages maintain important interpersonal relationships through blogs. Wide variation exists in how people disclose and manage their privacy on these blogs, particularly concerning the choices made about leaving information permanently visible on blogs or retrieving it sometime after an initial posting. This study applies Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory to explore the process of privacy rule adaptation for blogging by examining situations that have triggered bloggers to change their privacy rules to enact blog post deletion practices (“blog scrubbing”). Overall, open-ended responses from 356 bloggers were content analyzed. Chi-square analysis revealed differences in the frequency of triggers that changed the blogging post privacy rules and the proactive versus reactive nature of blogging privacy management deletion practices. Bloggers’ critical incidents that activate privacy rule changes demonstrate that impression management triggers, personal safety identity triggers, relational triggers, and legal/disciplinary triggers resulted in greater alteration of individual privacy rules used to protect these bloggers from the privileged online community of individuals granted access to an individual’s blog. Thus, bloggers essentially “scrubbed” their blog site and adapted their typical privacy rules with new ones that better protected them from the online community regarding that particular blogged information.