A criticism I have of my second article is that lack of acknowledgement of the risks associated with online communities. The article seems to suggest that creating a blog and then creating a network of blogs with online peers to form a community is nothing but beneficial to the user, suggesting that it allows them to “foster peer group relationships.” However, there is little to no acknowledgement of the problems that this could create, such as the trust you put into others in the community.
The article uses the statistic that 92% of blog users provide a name on their blog and 54% of bloggers provide more detailed information about themselves such as age, occupation or geographical location on the home page of their blogs. (Herring et al., 2004a) exclusively as evidence for the argument that blogs create a sense of empowerment as you are revealing your thoughts and feelings without a mask. Nowhere is there any recognition of the problems that this could bring in terms of sharing very specific information about you with an infinite amount of people online and the trust that they are therefore placing in the hands of strangers.
Article Huffaker, D.A. and Calvert S.L. (2005) “Gender, identity, and language use in teenage blogs” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol. 10 (Issue 2), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/huffaker.html [Accessed 11/03/09]
We seem to be slightly off track here?
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