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Introduction
During the past four years, there was an exponential upward trend on the internet, a phenomenon called blogging. In its simplest sense, blogging is maintaining and updating a blog, a web-based page where the blogger posts entries like photos, videos, audios, literary works, link to other sites, and so on in reversed chronological order. Blogs are now being used by politicians in their campaigns, by companies as a sales and marketing vehicle, and by journalists to connect more closely to readers (Richardson, 2004; CNET New.com, 2005).
Men and women, young and old, have become caught up with this phenomenon that there are now millions of blogs on the internet. According to scholars, the Internet “has penetrated almost every aspect of everyday life, from how we communicate, to how we learn, shop, and play” (Benton Foundation, 1998; Dertouzos, 1997; Jackson, 1999a; Keller, 1996; Kiesler, 1997; Tapscott, 1996, 1998; U.S. Department of Commerce, NTIA, 1995, 1997, 1999, as cited in Jackson, 2001).
This present research tries to take a close look at this phenomenon brought by the advent of the internet, particularly the behavior of men and women in their blogs and blog hopping and commenting activities.
This paper is divided into five sections: introduction, literature review which highlights relevant studies, a method which discusses how this present study was conducted, results which present the findings of this study, and discussion which includes the researcher’s interpretation of data and suggestions.
Literature
Men and women are generally perceived to be very different from one another, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally. They differ in their interests, in how they view things, in how they make decisions, in how they handle stuff, and so on. Numerous studies underscore the differences between men and women, but let us focus on communication.
In their verbal communication skills, a survey by the BBC (Brew, 2007) found that there is not much difference between men and women in the number of words they utter a day, thus debunking the long-held belief that women talk much more than men.
In their oral communication, an intensive study by Newman et. al (2008) which analyzed 14,000 texts found that men and women differed in their use of words, phrases, sentences, and meaning.
But how different are the two sexes online?
A study by Jackson et al (2001) which examined whether there is a “gender gap” in Internet use between men and women found that while both men and women consistently used the internet, their use was for different, purposes: women used the internet to communicate whereas men used it to search for information. Moreover, as predicted, “females used e-mail more than did males, consistent with their stronger motive for interpersonal communication” (Jackson, 2001).
A study by Schler et. al (2006) on blogs, on the other hand, found that men and women differ in writing style, as well as in the topics they write about. Women tend to be more personal in their style, and talked more about themselves and other personal stuff, compared with men.
The researchers concluded that:
“Male bloggers of all ages write more about politics, technology, and money than do their female cohorts. Female bloggers discuss their personal lives — and use a more personal writing style — much more than males do. Furthermore, for bloggers of each gender, a clear pattern of differences in content and style over age is apparent. Regardless of gender, writing style grows increasingly “male” with age: pronouns and assent/negation become scarcer, while prepositions and determiners become more frequent. Blog words are a clear hallmark of youth, while the use of hyperlinks increases with age. Content also evolves with age in ways that could have been anticipated.” (Scheler, 2006).
This present study is in a way similar to the Schler study above in that it also hopes to find what the men and women bloggers at the social networking site blogcatalog.com blog about. Specifically, it wants to know whether or not there is also a marked difference in the topics the two sexes tackle in their blogs. The present study would be different from that of Schler et. al because the present study used a different approach, has an extremely small number of blogs, and is much too simple (the Scheler study is much more complex and in-depth having considered many variables). In a way, this present study could be called the simplified version of the Schler study.
Nevertheless, the study would be important as it would give a glimpse into the blogging preferences of the two sexes, particularly the members of blogcatalog.com.
Method
The researcher viewed the blog profiles of 20 of the randomly featured blogs on the social networking site. Ten of the blogs viewed were owned by men while the rest were owned by women.
The blogs were categorized from the descriptions provided by the blog owners. The rough categories from the authors’ descriptions of their blogs (poetry, literature, reflection, etc) were further grouped into general classifications: literature (poetry, literature), reflections (life, relationships), humor, hobby (arts, crafts, photography) and technical (business, online gaming, programming, marketing, gadgets).
The blogs owned by women reviewed in the study and their rough categories are the following:
Table 1. Blogs of Women Viewed in the Study
The blogs owned by men reviewed in the study and their rough categories are the following:
Table 2. Blogs of Men Viewed in the Study
Results
Of the 10 women’s blogs viewed, 4 focused on literature, 3 tackled issues about life, 1 discussed humor, 1 touched on politics, and 1 on crafts and arts.
Of the 10 men’s blogs viewed, 2 tackled photography, 2 discussed life, two focused on photography, 1 talked about literature, 1 focused on humor, 1 discussed marketing, and 1 discussed mobile phones.
Table 3. Comparison of Topics Contained in Men’s and Women’s Blogs by Rough Category
When the rough classifications had been categorized further, the results were as follows:
Table 4. Comparison of Topics Contained in Men’s and Women’s Blogs by General Category
In this study, it should be noted that literature pertained to poetry (as only two of the blogs considered in the study also focused on another literary genre) and the category life meant talks about daily activities and experiences, as well as reflections and musings. All the other categories are more clear-cut and definitive than the two categories mentioned in this paragraph.
From the results of the study, it could be gleaned that indeed, that men and women have different interests, and this difference, they bring to their blogs which most often is the reflection of the bloggers’ personality — their beliefs, their stands on issues, their hobbies, their interests, and so on.
Discussion
As shown in the results of the study, there is a difference in the topics that men and women discuss in their respective blogs. Women tend to write more about literature and life, whereas men talk more about technical stuff like online gaming, online marketing, gadgets, and hobbies. Humor appeared to be a shared interest by men and women. In a way, this explains and reinforces the reasoning behind why men’s magazines (online or print) often feature technical content, like graphics, gadgets, gaming, and sports whereas women’s magazines always contain stuff on relationships, family, reflections, and so on. The non-regularity of poetry and literature pieces on women’s magazines perhaps is because not anyone can edit poetry (even good journalists and magazine editors may not be able to do it unless they are poets themselves).
But while the results of the study are interesting and support the findings of relevant studies, like that of Schler, it should be noted that the study has a lot of limitations. For one, the number of blogs reviewed was very small, hence, the study should just be taken as a preliminary or test study. Moreover, the blogs were not reviewed in depth. The researcher relied only on the categories assigned by the bloggers to their blogs. Finally, the other demographics like the location of the bloggers, nationality, age, social status, and other details should also be considered in future studies. These things, not just gender, may play a big role in the topics that the bloggers discuss.
It would be interesting if a similar study would be done in the future to find out not only how different men and women are from each other, but also to find out their shared interests. Studies such as this can help understand the two sexes, and more importantly, in creating marketing plans and targeted ads for online users. Being able to find out which of the domains of human communication interest both men and women will also be important in feeding two the sex’s materials that they both enjoy.
Bibliography
Anedeken, S. (2005). Academics Give Lessons on Blogs. BBC News. Web.
Brew, C. (2007). What Women Talk About. Web.
CNET.com. (2005). Future of Blogging. CNET.Com.
Liberman, M. (2007). What Men and Women Talk About. Web.
Newman, M. (2008). Gender Differences in Language Use. BBC News.
Schler, J. (2006). Effects of Gender and Age on Blogging.
Jackson, L. A. et al. (2001). Gender and the Internet: Women Communicating and Men Searching – Statistical Data Included.
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