The paper presents the results of a qualitative study of blogging in a real-life community in which we aimed to understand the process by which an individual becomes involved in this practice. We conducted open-ended interviews with members of a university research center, discussing their experiences and habits reading blogs or maintaining their own. Our sample contained seasoned bloggers, rec...

Two studies explored the relationship between blogging and psychological empowerment among women. First, a survey (N = 340) revealed that personal journaling empowers users by inducing a strong sense of community whereas filter blogging does so by enhancing their sense of agency. Various user motivations were also shown to predict psychological empowerment. Next, a 2 (type of blog) X 2 (comment...

This chapter investigates whether and how micro-messaging technologies such as Twitter messages can be harnessed to obtain valuable information. The interesting characteristics of micro-blogging services, such as being user oriented, provide opportunities for different applications to use the content of these sites to their advantage. However, the same characteristics become the weakness of the...

In this project we attempt to perform sentiment based classification of Micro-blogs using Machine Learning techniques. Sentiment Analysis of short messages posted on Micro-blogging tools can be helpful in determining the current usability and acceptance of any target product or service. It can help in raising alarms in the wake of sudden shifts in user sentiments or attitude towards the service...

Based on the self-disclosure theory and the social capital theory, this study investigates if bloggers' self-disclosure enhances their social capital and if these capitals in turn enhance perception of subjective well-being (SWB). The results reveal that the self-disclosure of bloggers significantly and directly affects a blogger's perception of social integration, bonding social capital, and b...

Blogging is a popular activity with high impact on marketing, shaping public opinions, and informing the world about major events from a grassroots point of view. Influential bloggers are recognized by businesses as significant forces for product promotion or demotion, and by oppressive political regimes as serious threats to their power. This paper studies the problem of identifying influentia...

Despite the impact that influential American political bloggers have had on public policies and the mainstream media agenda in recent years, very little research is currently available on the most widely read political bloggers. Through a survey of 66 top American political bloggers, the present study examines this elite group by analyzing their initial and current motivations for blogging as w...