Social interaction in motherhood blogs : a netnographic study

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze social interaction in Finnish motherhood blogs. Blogs are a part of a larger phenomenon of user-generated content (UGC), which refers to all different forms of media content that are publicly available on the Internet and created by end-users. UGC has fundamentally changed the world of entertainment, communication, and information by providing different peer-to-peer and information search tools. This study focuses specifically on insite interactivity in personal blogs. The popularity of motherhood blogs in the blogosphere has rocketed during the past couple of years and today mommy bloggers can be seen as one of the most influential blogger subgroups. Theoretical framework for this study was constructed from the motives for engaging in UGC and the outcomes of doing so. The main motivations for consuming and participating in UGC were social aspects, information search, entertainment and inspiration, and economic incentives. Motivations for producing UGC were self-expression, social aspects, information dissemination, entertainment, and economic and professional incentives. Bloggers and blog readers are intimately related through the writing, reading, and commenting of blog entries. Mommy blogs are especially communal in nature because the members are primarily searching for information as well as peer support from the Internet. Discussion frames identified in previous research form the basis for the outcomes of engaging in UGC. Discussion frames in the context of UGC were social networking, drawing inspiration, sharing knowledge, providing peer support, negotiating norms, and opposing values. Netnography, a purely observational qualitative research method, was chosen as the research method because it is designed to exploring cultures and communities that emerge through computer-mediated communications. The study followed the flow of the netnographic research process. The blog Lähiömutsi was selected based on the six criteria for evaluating online communities and sites as potential research objects. During the blog observation, blog entries from the beginning of December 2012 to the end of March 2013 were retrieved from the blog’s archives along with the comments they had received. Total collected data amounted to 211 pages, containing 54 blog entries and 1377 comments. Data was analyzed using categorization. Eight discussion frames, namely introducing and welcoming, exchanging courtesies, drawing inspiration, searching for information, sharing knowledge, providing peer support, expressing opinions, and opposing values, emerged from the data. It was observed that controversial and sensitive topics attract the largest number of comments and that positive and negative comments raise the overall number of comments. Keywords: social interaction, blogs, discussion frames, netnograph