Behind the Blog | Undergraduate Honors Thesis
Spring 2014 | Thesis adviser: Lois Boynton | Honors level: With Highest Honors
Behind the Blog: The Connection Between Online Social Media Personas and Reader Perspectives
by Wendy Lu '14
Our means of online communication have shifted over the decades—from email to instant messaging to social media networks, particularly weblogs (commonly known as blogs). There are various reasons why people are motivated to blog, including life documentation, personal commentary and the desire for human connectivity. This research project explores how individuals living in Western countries who follow unique – or “unconventional” – lifestyles use online blogs to develop their social media personas and share their lifestyles with other people (their followers/readers), and the perceptions that their readers have of these blogs and lifestyles. Using the concepts of co-orientation and grounded theory, I conducted a blog analysis of three different blogs and examined the relationships between bloggers and their readers, and how influential the blogs were in changing the readers’ perceptions of the bloggers’ lifestyles. The bloggers include a traveler-entrepreneur, a writer who quit his day job to be a full-time blogger and professional speaker, and an individual with a physical disability, respectively. Reader comments were mostly positive; overall, the bloggers had a positive effect on the readers’ perceptions of them and even influenced some readers to explore the same lifestyles. Future research should focus more on relationships between individual bloggers and readers rather than overall trends and interaction patterns.
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The Hussman School Honors Program is available to students wishing to pursue an original and substantial research or creative project under direct supervision of a faculty adviser during their senior year. Learn more at mj.unc.edu/Honors.
Image credit: Dorothy Joseph