Self-disclosure in weblogs among adolescent bloggers: A qualitative approach

As weblogs have grown in recent years as a medium of expression and communication, this paper presents a learning that would study self-disclosure among bloggers towards non-virtual people or real people and virtual people or people who one meets in the web in the Philippines, wherein bloggers either use their real name or pseudonym in identifying themselves. A qualitative research design was done wherein questionnaires were used for data gathering in describing self disclosure towards non-virtual people and and virtual people, and content analysis to evaluate the data. Results showed that there are differences as to information disclosed by Private Bloggers and Public Bloggers. There are also differences as to the content disclosed by Public and Private Bloggers towards Real People and through the internet. Private Bloggers are more confident in disclosing information as compared to that of a Public Blogger as there are more content found in blogs of Private Bloggers than that of Public Bloggers. Overall, both Private and Public Bloggers\u27 disclosure in a face-to-face interaction would majority be information regarding their tastes and interests