Some Evidence that Blogging is Beneficial

By Guest Author Eduard Nagornyy, found at @eduardNagornyy and http://eduardnagornyy.tumblr.com/ .

A t-shirt promotes bloggingMillions of people blog. Some blog just to vent and others do it to manage their distress (an emotional release). What many might not know is that blogging, for the majority of users, is therapeutic, socially supportive.

Initial research was done on the psychosocial (the relationship between individual thought and behavior, and certain social factors) benefits of blogging. Many bloggers blogged the initial research and created discussions about it.

Baker and Moore compared the responses in these discussions to the results of the initial research on social connectedness, satisfaction with friendship, and psychological distress; essentially they sought to determine if the blogging community agreed or disagreed with the initial research. They took three weeks to complete where searches were done on specific blog search engines (e.g. Google Blog Search), and they looked for any reference to the initial research. 167 sources found (English-written blogs) generated nearly 500 comments. The comments were then categorized under individual users (289 unique user comments) that commented on the initial research. The majority of the results agreed with the initial research, with 55% whole-heartedly supporting the results, 25% accepting the results, 11% feeling neutral towards the results, 6% opposing the results, and 3% that were unfriendly (comments that were angrily vented with foul language).

This research indicates that blogging can be beneficial. 80% of the users here claim to have a positive experience while blogging. Some of the benefits include increased self-esteem and self-worth, less stress after participating, emotional release, higher trust in others, inter-mixing socially, and friendship fulfillment. The overall well-being of a person who blogs might be higher quality because of recognized social support than that of a person who does not blog.

So, for those people who are under a lot of stress, make a blog and vent. Join the millions of other users who do the very same thing and release yourself emotionally. It might be surprising how therapeutic blogging can be and the social support behind it. On a side-note, this second-wave of research was done using dialogue, meaning that the authors used the responses to the research as evidence. This type of procedure is not widely used but the authors claim it should be used more often, especially since technology is allowing the participation of users with the research and results. The procedure provides the researchers and their methods more transparency.

Baker, J. R., & Moore, S. M. (2011). An Opportunistic Validation of Studies on the Psychosocial Benefits of Blogging. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14(6), 387-390.