A different perspective on blogging
Blogs illustrate “the fusion of key elements of human desire—to express one’s identity, create community, structure one’s past and present experiences”
Hello everyone and welcome to the blog of Infer Consulting NZ. As a Psychologist (and a hopeless researcher), the first thing I did when thinking about writing this was look at the ethos of blogging. So before we go anywhere else, particularly into the fascinating world of research and how we can use it to make our and other peoples live better, let's figure out why blogging is so important.
On wordpress alone over 409 million people view more than 19.1 billion pages, also over 60.1 million new posts and 61.5 million new comments are created each month. You can even see a great live feed of activity on wordpress blogs right here. I really recommend taking a look at this feed, because even all the way over that edges of the world like we are in New Zealand, it is a lovely feeling to see the flashes of activity lighting up that show us we are not alone here in the world of blogging.
But why are we doing this? What I found (and probably what is obvious to most people) is that blogging is about giving a voice to issues that concern us. All the way back in 2008 – I know this actually isn’t very long ago, but I am so new to blogging it is a surprise to me that a psychology of it has existed for this long – researchers from the University of Minnesota found that blogs illustrate “the fusion of key elements of human desire—to express one’s identity, create community, structure one’s past and present experiences” (Gurak & Antonijevic, 2008). This actually makes blogs very powerful, because it means we are able to share our thoughts, feelings and experiences regardless of the differences between us, and in that process potentially create something bigger than ourselves.
In another study it was found that knowledge sharing was one of the biggest predictors of positive attitudes toward and engagement in blogging (Hsu & Lin, 2008). Meaning that the more we want to contribute our ideas to the public sphere, and hopefully sue them to the benefit of others, the more you think blogging is a good thing.
So, it is an exciting and somewhat daunting task to begin a blog, especially when I hope to discuss things that are close to my heart, and that is what this blog – is all about. So please follow us on here and on twitter to see what interesting blogs have been published, and what different perspectives we present.
- Jaimee