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A study on the construction of identity in the blogging world among Hong Kong adolescents

Tsang, Man-ying.; 曾曼瑩. Tsang, M. [曾曼瑩]. (2011). A study on the construction of identity in the blogging world among Hong Kong adolescents. (Unpublished thesis). University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.5353/th_b4786967. 2011

http://hdl.handle.net/10722/161526

The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works.

A STUDY ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY IN THE BLOGGING WORLD AMONG HONG KONG ADOLESCENTS

TSANG MAN YING

THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG 2011

A study on the construction of identity in the blogging world among Hong Kong adolescents by

Tsang Man Ying B.A. H.K

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong August 2011

Abstract of thesis entitled

A study on the construction of identity in the blogging world among Hong Kong adolescents submitted by

Tsang Man Ying for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in August 2011

Blogging

has

been

one

the

most

popular

means

computer-mediated communication in recent years. It is generally agreed that blogging has replaced traditional diary writing and functioned as a useful tool for individuals to present themselves and construct their self-images. Its popularity has also drawn the attention of many scholars and much research has been conducted to investigate the different issues related to the presentation of identities by bloggers particularly adolescents. Despite the significant impact of blogging on adolescent identity development, few attempts have been made to explore the role of contextual elements in identity construction. Moreover, most previous studies on blogs were conducted in separation from the bloggers and their offline world. The blogging world was not well-connected to the bloggers’ other aspects of lives. The current study has adopted a constructionist approach to explore the identity construction of a group of Hong Kong adolescents. The notion of communities of practice is used to conceptualize the nonymous context of the blogging world. More importantly, more attention is paid to various contextual elements which

constitute the online community of practice so as to gain a more comprehensive understanding of online identity work.

The analysis examines the textual and non-textual elements of blogs to investigate how the adolescents construct different forms of identity which manifest their engagement in the online communities of practice. It shows that the nonymous context has resulted in adolescents presenting a wide range of desirable qualities which include interpersonal-related qualities, academic related qualities, personal related qualities and family-related qualities throughout their blogs. The construction which enables the adolescents to fulfill numerous developmental tasks is not done in isolation but in response to their interaction with the members of the blogging community. The importance of audience as a contextual element is seen in their role as identity co-constructors who help reinforce or supplement the blog owners’ identity presentation from time to time. Furthermore, a strong connectedness between the adolescents’ online and offline identity is observed. The offline world serves as another community of practice which interacts with the online world – the community of practice under investigation.

The study suggests that the diverse forms of identity constructed online are strong evidence showing the adolescents’ competence in performing sophisticated identity work. It is also expected that there will be more interaction between various communities and their contextual elements in the future development of identity construction with the rapid penetration of social-networking tools in our everyday lives, especially

adolescents. An overlap between different online communities is seen in the current study. More thorough examination of adolescent identity work through social-networking tools can provide valuable insights into the emotional health and well-being of adolescents over time. (445 words)

Declaration

I declare that this thesis represents my own work, except where due acknowledgment is made, and that it has not been previously included in a thesis, dissertation or report submitted to this University or to any other institution for a degree, diploma or other qualifications.

Signed ……………………………………………………………….. Tsang Man Ying

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Agnes Kang, for guiding me through this thesis with intellectual advice and useful feedback on my drafts. I am very grateful to her for introducing me to the interesting fields of language and identity, language and gender and discourse analysis during my undergraduate study. These have certainly given much inspiration to my postgraduate study and the research study presented in this thesis. Without her encouragement and complete confidence in me, my pursuit of the Degree of Master of Philosophy would have been more challenging than now.

I would also like to thank other teaching staff of the School of English at the University of Hong Kong for opening up my mind to the fascinating world of English Linguistics and Literature during my undergraduate and postgraduate studies. The mounting knowledge gained has been very useful to me both as an English teacher and a keen English learner.

I must also thank my dearest university friends, Matthew Sung and Daniel Lam, for sharing their valuable experiences on their postgraduate studies throughout the research process. Their sharing and comments have provided me good insights into my research.

My thanks also go to the students who have agreed to participate in the current research. It was their interesting blogs which had prompted ii

me to start drafting the current research. Without the contribution of their blogs and their trust in me during the interviews, the current research would not have been successful.

Furthermore, I am indebted to my colleagues for their moral support and nice conversations which have definitely motivated me to complete my thesis with confidence from time to time.

I hope to thank my parents as well for having taken very good care of me and given me the freedom to pursue my goals.

iii

Contents

Declaration………………………………………………………..………………i Acknowledgements………………………………………………..……………ii Table of Contents……………………………………………………….………iv

Chapter 1

Research Context

1.1

Adolescents in the age of online communication …………….………1

1.2

Current research: Identity construction in a blogging community…4

1.3

Overview of the thesis …………….……………………….……………9

Chapter 2

Identity, Adolescence and Blogging

2.1

Introduction ……...………………...…………………….……………..12

2.2

Defining identity ………………….………….………….….…………12 2.2.1

Personal and social identities ……………………………….12

2.2.2

Essentialist approach to identity ……………………………13

2.2.3

Social constructionist approach to identity ………………14

2.3

Identity work in the online world ……………………………………19

2.4

The search for identity during adolescence ……………….…………21

2.5

Performing identity online during adolescence …………………….26

2.6

Identity construction in blogs …………………………….………..….30

2.7

2.6.1

Defining blogs …………………………….………..…………30

2.6.2

Writing diaries: from paper diary to public blogs ………...32

Adolescent blogs and identity construction: An overview ………...33 2.7.1

Disclosing personal information in blogs ………………….33 iv

2.7.2

Gender differences in blogging ……………………………..37

2.7.3

Use of blogs among marginalized adolescents…………… 38

2.7.4

Debate on online and offline identities …………………….40

2.7.5

Contextualizing identity performance ……………………..43

Chapter 3 3.1

3.2

Analytical approach and data collection

Analytical approach ……………………………………..……………..47 3.1.1

Social constructionist approach ……………………………..47

3.1.2

Communities of practice ……………………...……………..48

Selection of participants: from unknown bloggers to known bloggers …………………………………………………..……………..55

3.3

Locating active and related blogs …………………………………….57

3.4

Examining the blog service provider: Xanga ………………………..58

3.5

Data analysis ……………………………………………..……………..59 3.5.1

Analysis of blog elements …………………………….……..61

3.5.2

Interviews ……………………………………………………..65

Chapter 4 On the stage: Identity performance in blog 4.1

Blogs as a nonymous environment …………………………………..67

4.2

Performing desirable qualities in blogs ……………………………..74 4.2.1

Interpersonal related qualities ……………………………..75 4.2.1.1

‘My best friend gives reply to my msg very quickly’: Being popular among friends ……………………75

4.2.1.2

‘If you still feel unwell, see a doctor then’: Being concerned about friends …………………..85

4.2.1.3

‘Now I am not busy, so I MUST type something’: Keeping friends updated with their status ……...89

4.2.1.4

‘Thanks all who have said “congratulations” to me’: Being thankful to friends …………………………92

4.2.1.5

‘Great friend alliance’: Showing sense of belonging to established peer groups ……………………………………………..96

4.2.1.6 Gender differences in the presentation of friendship ………………………………………..101

4.2.2

Academic related qualities ……………………………….105 4.2.2.1

‘The only thing I can do is study’: Being hard working and responsible for their studies …..…………………………………..……..106

4.2.2.2

‘I don’t want to be distracted by computers any more’: Prepared for challenges and reflective on results ……………………………………………….……...109

4.2.2.3

‘I can't make Miss Hui disappointed’: Being respectful ……………………………….….114

4.2.3

Personal related qualities ……………………………..……116 4.2.3.1

‘Let's get improved to reach the goal’: Being independent and responsible ……………117

4.2.3.2

‘I am very surprised to have broken my own record’: Being competent ………………………………….122

4.2.3.3

‘I think you have made the wrong judgment’: Being thoughtful and reflective …………………129

4.2.4

Family related qualities …………………………………….141 4.2.4.1

‘Mum said sometimes I should not be so single-minded’: Being obedient to parents ………………………..141

4.2.4.2

‘My sister is really nice to me’: Being thankful to their parents and family members …………………………………………..143

4.2.4.3

‘Sometimes, it is really warm to have dinner with my family’: Treasuring the time with family members ………………………………………………………144

4.2.5

Other desirable qualities ………...…………………………..145 4.2.5.1

‘I really hope China can beat Cuba’: Being patriotic …………………………………….145

4.2.5.2

‘Be humble and purified when seeking God's voice’: Being religious ……………………………………147

4.2.5.2

‘I won’t be in the same class as you LA’: Being a Hong Konger ……………………………153

Chapter 5

Making meaning of online identity performance and adolescent development

5.1

Introduction …………………………………………………………...157 5.1.1

Engaging in various developmental tasks through a consistent presentation of desirable qualities across the blogs ………………………………………………………….157 vii

5.1.2

Contextualizing identity work for more interaction with the audience ……………………………………………………..162

5.1.3

Audience being co-constructors of identity on the stage …………………………………………………………..……..166

5.1.4

Connecting and extending the boundaries of the online and offline worlds ………………………………………………..169

5.1.5

Putting on the same forms of performance in different online worlds ………………………………………………..172

5.1.6

Heading towards critical identity formation in emerging adulthood …………………………………………………..175

5.2

Conclusion ……………………………………………………………..179

5.3

Situating the current research in the literature …………………….180

5.4

Limitations of the current research and future research directions ………………………………………………….………………………..182

References ………………………………………………….…………………186 Appendix ………………………………………………….…………………202

viii

Chapter 1

Research Context 1.1

Adolescents in the age of computer mediated communication The past ten years has witnessed the beginning of the Web 2.0 era

with the rise of the Internet. Its explosive evolution has resulted in the introduction of numerous Internet-based applications which include chat rooms, emails, instant messaging and more recently developed social networking sites. These applications have functioned as social media which enable us to engage in interactive communication online. People all over the world are flocking to the Internet and communicating with each other through these applications every day. According to the statistics of Internet World Stats (Internet World Stats, 2010), the total number of Internet users in the world has increased by 400% since 2000. The penetration of the Internet is also prominent in Hong Kong. The statistics from Internet World Stats shows that internet penetration in Hong Kong ranked number one in Asia and number nine in the world. According to the report of Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, there were about 4.3 million Internet users with over 76 percent of households having personal computers connected to the Internet (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2010). The widespread use of the Internet in our life has made the Internet and its applications appealing targets of scholarly research. Earlier research on computer-mediated communication mainly focused on traditional media such as email, chatrooms, homepages and 1

bulletin boards (Dominick, 1999; Rheingold, 1995; Surratt, 1998; Turkle, 1996; Talamo & Ligorio, 2001). Recently, there has been a growing interest in social networking sites like blogs, Facebook which are more interactive and immediate (House, 2004; Huffaker & Calvert, 2005; Subrahmanyama & Greenfield, 2008b; Patchin & Hinduja, 2010). Blogs are one of the most widely studied forms of social networking sites (Hollenbaugh, 2010). Blogs are webpages which operate in the form of online diaries. They mainly consist of posts arranged in reverse chronological order with the latest update one shown immediately on the first page. People who own and maintain the content of blogs are named ‘bloggers’ and the activities associated with blogs are often described by an umbrella term, ‘blogging’. After a slow start, blogs started to gain popularity and usage with the introduction of blogging services in many websites such as LiveJournal, blogger.com and Open Diary in the late 1990s (Karpf, 2008). The recent improvement in designs of blog sites which enable simple and fast creation of blog content further popularizes blogs among people who do not have much technical and computer programming skills. Up till now, different types of blogs like personal blogs, political blogs, campaign blogs, organizational blogs and community blogs have been developed, serving a wide range of communication purposes. According to the statistics of Technorati (2010), an Internet search engine for blogs, there has been more than 133 million blogs created by the end of 2010. It is estimated that about 900,000 new blog entries are being posted every day and over 350 million people read blogs every day in different parts of the world. The recently coined term ‘blogosphere’, which refers to the world of all blogs, further highlights the 2

fast development of blogs. One important feature about the development of blogs is that adolescents make up the majority of bloggers in many places where Internet usage is high. This could be attributed to the fact that many current adolescents have been growing up in a digital era with easy access to computers in every aspect of their lives. Computers have become such an inseparable element that any new development will definitely change the ways by which the adolescents live their lives. The popularity of blogs in recent years has therefore encouraged more adolescents to take part in online communication at blogging sites. With high Internet usage, Hong Kong adolescents are also participating in blogging actively. This is supported by many statistical data about adolescent bloggers. In a survey of blogging conducted in mid 2007, the Xinhuanet estimated that 40 % of Hong Kong adolescents aged 10 and older have their own blogs (Xinhuanet, 2007). According to the statistic from Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department (2009), about 25 percent of the surveyed adolescents claimed that the major purpose of using Internet service is blogging. Being a major form of social communication media, blogs do not simply allow adolescents to write diaries online but also enable them to interact with others in ways which have resulted in significant impact on many important developmental tasks during adolescence, particularly the expressions of self. The close relation between blogging and adolescents has interested many developmental psychologists and inspired them to conduct research analyzing self-presentation and interaction in the blogs of adolescents and young emerging adults. Many scholars have expressed their appreciation of the potentials for blogs to be the platforms for 3

adolescent identity formation and how identity work could be done online more diversely than anyone could imagine (e.g., Bortree, 2005; Davis, 2010; Duits, 2007; Goya, 2008; Hevern, 2004; Kleman, 2008; Larsen 2007; Subrahmanyam, 2007). As a secondary school teacher, I am also aware of the commonality of these online tools among the adolescents I come into contact with. The majority of my current students are communicating with their peers using instant messaging systems like MSN after school. They also have Facebook accounts to upload and share their photos. However, what impresses me most is their use of blogs. Not only has the content of their blogs deepened my understanding of some students’ innermost thoughts and feelings on school matters, they have also informed me of students’ private matters such as their social circles and relationship with parents. Some of the information can even help my colleagues like counseling and discipline teachers to handle the emotional and discipline problems of some students. All these show that blogs are something more than online diaries as they serve important tools for people working closely with adolescents. I am therefore conducting the current research to explore blogs more so as to get a better understanding of online identity formation among local adolescents.

1.2

Current research: Identity construction in a blogging community The studies of identity work in the past ten years have suggested a

shift from a static and fixed view of identity to a more interactive and dynamic view of identity. More findings have supported that identity work is ever changing and different forms of identity are constructed at 4

particular time in particular contexts (Cerulo, 1997; Miller & Jill, 2001). The current research extends the line of research on online identity construction. Drawing on the perspectives of social constructive approaches to identity and guided by Lave and Wenger’s notion of the community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), this research aims to investigate how adolescents, being members of the blog communities, construct various forms of their identities in response to the environment of the communities through some shared practices. Zhao et al. (2008) discussed that there are two main kinds of online environment: anonymous and nonymous environments. These two environments are defined by the intended audience. The former one refers to those social media by which individuals mainly interact with others who are strangers to the individuals in face-to-face encounters. The latter one describes the social media which allow individuals to communicate with people they get to know in face-to-face encounters. These people could be acquaintances or close friends. The presentation of self varies in these environments. Zhao et al. used the terms ‘hoped-for possible selves’, ‘now selves’ and ‘possible selves’ to describe the variation in presentation in the two kinds of environments. ‘Now selves’ refer to the aspects of selves which are familiar to most people in face-to-face encounters and are most likely to be presented in a nonymous environment; ‘hoped-for possible selves’ are the selves that are socially desirable identities that an individual would like to present and are likely to be presented given the right context in both anonymous and nonymous environments; ‘possible selves’ are images of the selves that are currently unknown to others and are usually fantasized or unattainable ‘ideal’ selves which are presented 5

only in an anonymous environment. Such variation in the presentation of selves has been very helpful in understanding the fantastical identities presented in most role-playing chat rooms and discussion forums and the realistic identities found in intranet communication and dating websites (Douglas et al, 2001; Yurchisin et al, 2005; Ellison et al, 2006; Gibbs et al, 2006). With the blogging community under investigation as a nonymous environment, it is expected that adolescents would construct ‘hoped-for possible’ selves which are based on the ‘now selves’ familiar to their peers (the intended audience) to avoid deviant performances and to coordinate their online identity claims with their offline self-performance. The current research will answer the following research questions: 1.

What are the various forms of the hoped-for possible selves that the adolescents would construct in the blogging community? The research will look at the desirable aspects of their selves that

students will construct in their blogs. It aims to find out the qualities that the students believe will appeal to most of their intended audience and make them feel comfortable in offline encounters and connect with the ‘now selves’. Since the adolescents in the current research were all born and grow up in Hong Kong, the analysis will also explore how the adolescents construct different aspects of themselves in response to various elements of a Hong Kong community in both the online and offline world. Such elements include the development of social networking sites in Hong Kong, the features of Hong Kong education system, the values of Chinese families, and the attributes of Hong Kong as an international city and a Chinese city.

What are the strategies that the adolescents adopt to present their identities in the nonymous environment of the blogging community? As suggested by Goffman’s theory of the Presentation of Self (Goffman,

1959 as cited in Lenhart, 2005), individuals use different strategies in presenting themselves to achieve different goals. This research will find out the strategies employed by students to present their hoped-for possible selves. The strategies can be divided into two main categories which fit the two elements of performance mentioned by Goffman. The first category concerns those explicit and deliberate strategies which are, in Goffman’s words, what the performers ‘give’ in the construction of identities. Examples of these strategies are mainly narrative, like explicit statements about ‘me’ in the blog profile and other verbal descriptions of the blog owners’ personal interests and favourite activities in the blog entries. The second category is implicit strategies which are like what performers ‘give off’ involuntarily or unintentionally in the performance. Common implicit strategies include the display of pictures, photos and videos. According to Zhao et al. (2008), implicit strategies are something ‘given off’ since the blog owners are ‘showing without telling’. Sometimes implicit strategies may be supplemented with some captions or simple verbal descriptions. The choice of explicit and implicit strategies often emerges in the course of the joint blogging activities around the bloggers and the choice is not a random one but common practices negotiated by bloggers in the blogging community. A final note on the significance of the current research is that the findings can contribute to the literature of blogging which is dominated by English. The majority of studies on blogging focus on English-speaking 7

blogs and English-speaking Internet users. Only a handful of researchers explore the world of blogs written in non-English languages or produced by non-English bloggers. These include the study on the Persian bloggers by Esmaili et al. (2006); Polish bloggers by Trammell et al. (2006); Taglish bloggers by Smedley (2006); German bloggers by Schmidt (2007); Japanese bloggers by Miura & Yamash*ta (2007); young French bloggers by Muratore (2008) and the use of photos among young Swedish bloggers by Palmgren (2010). Although statistics continue to support the dominance of English in blogging practice, its dominance is being taken over by Japanese and there has been a growing number of blogs written in Chinese and many other languages (Technorati, 2007). Moreover, blogging practice and online communication behaviours in different regions can vary because of different factors such as the technological advancement of countries, the availability of other forms of online communication and the population of netizens and cultural perspectives. A comparative study of 1200 Chinese and American 12-year-old youths conducted by Jackson et al (2008) found that the moral attitudes and acceptability of a diverse set of morally questionable online behaviors varied much between people of different cultural background. More notable and relevant examples of this are Chen’s (2010) and Lin’s et al. recent studies (2010). Chen found that Taiwanese and American bloggers might perform in different ways which are in line with the characteristics of the bloggers’ cultural background. Taiwanese bloggers were concerned about maintaining good social relations online rather than showcasing their intellectuality. On the other hand, American bloggers were less interested in online relations but more open about themselves. Lin et al. (2010) compared the civic use of social 8

media among youths aged between 12 and 17 in Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo in 2007. The comparison shows that the pattern of Internet use is strongly influenced and contextualized by the culture in which the youths have grown up. Various social factors come into play to influence internet use which encompasses the scope and intensity of certain forms of engagement. The current study will further contribute to the literature of studies on the contextual nature of internet use by focusing on the blogging practice of a group of Cantonese-speaking adolescents in Hong Kong. By applying the concept of community of practice, the current study will explore how shared blogging practice is developed in response to various factors which are most relevant to the community.

1.3

Overview of the thesis The current research is presented in four chapters. In Chapter 2, the

concept of identity, adolescent development and the features of online communication tools will be examined. Since the focus of the research is on blogging among adolescents, the observation of identity work in blogs will be discussed in greater details through a review of the previous research studies in the literature. The current research gaps in the field of online identity construction will be explored with a view to presenting the research objectives of the current research which analyzes identity construction in a nonymous context. Chapter 3 is devoted to the research methods used to collect appropriate adolescent blogs for the research. The chapter begins with a discussion on the adoption of Lave and Wenger’s notion of community of 9

practices (1991) to investigate the blogging practice of adolescents. Besides, the criteria for the selection of blogs and participants will be presented. The textual, graphic and visual elements which will be considered in the examination of identity performance are introduced. Finally, the design of the interviews conducted will be discussed. The analysis of the blogs will be presented in great details in Chapter 4 with reference to the literature and previous studies. It focuses on the different kinds of desirable qualities that the adolescents present across most of their blogs. It will first discuss how maintaining a good relationship with peers dominates most blogs. The adolescents make use of blogs to announce their circles of friends, strengthen the ties with existing friends and maintain contact with some acquaintances through a wide range of posts. The blog audience – the bloggers’ friends – also takes an active role in responding to the bloggers’ presentation through leaving comments. Then it will look at the qualities related to academic performances. It is found that the adolescents are highly concerned about their study and are able to set goals and reflect on their academic results for improvements. Here, encouragements from peers and seniors help motivate the adolescents to aspire to success. Next, the personal qualities of the adolescents who blog to record their personal development over time will be explored. They take the audience to experience events which have prompted them to develop more mature skills and ways of thinking. These are traces of the advancement of their growth between adolescence and adulthood. In the last part of this chapter, other less dominant but significant desirable qualities across the blogs will be discussed. These qualities provide researchers and audience insights into the adolescents’ 10

relationship with their families, their attitude towards their country and religious beliefs. The implications of the desirable qualities will be analyzed in Chapter 5. It is shown that the identity work of the adolescents is done in a consistent way. They present themselves in collaboration with and in consideration of the audience of their blogs. The boundaries between online and offline worlds are blurring, too, with more interactions between the participants in both worlds. In the last chapter, the limitations of the current research on identity, adolescence and blogs will be discussed. In particular, suggestions for future research will be made with reference to the development of online communication tools and the findings of the current research.

Chapter 2

Identity, Adolescence and Blogging

2.1

Introduction This chapter begins with a review of two major research approaches

to the concept of identity. The review focuses closely on the adoption of a social constructionist approach in recent research with reference to its remarkable contribution to the study of gender and other forms of identity. After the review, some previous research studies focusing on online identity construction in blogs will be highlighted to see how blogs can serve as a significant tool for adolescents to construct various aspects of their identity. As the current study is conducted against a backdrop of the fields of identity construction, personal development and online communication, the review of the literature will be done with adolescents being the primary focus.

2.2

Defining identity

2.2.1

Personal and social identities

In discussing identity formation among adolescents, it is necessary to understand what constitutes the notion of identity. Identity has been the topic of a considerable literature and has been defined in numerous ways in different fields, particularly in psychology and sociology (Finkenauer et al., 2002). Generally speaking, identity is about one’s self-knowledge of 12

who and what one is. The self-knowledge covers a large variety of issues including one’s attributes, characteristics, capacities and preferences. According to Buckingham (2008), identity implies both similarity and difference. On the one hand, identity is about how a person is different from other people. It is about something which is unique to each of us. Identity in this sense is often called ‘self identity’ in literature. On the other hand, identity also implies membership of particular groups. For some forms of identity such as national identity and cultural identity, identity is mainly about how one is similar to others in some significant ways. Identities about membership and affiliation are often called ‘social identities’ (Tajfel, 1982). The presence of these two main types of identities suggests that an individual may possess multiple identities and different identities may be more salient than others at any one time (Hogg et al. 1995).

2.2.2

Essentialist approach to identity In the literature of identity, a distinction is often made between

identity as something rather stable and identity as socially constructed (Wetherall, 2002; Larsen, 2007). The former is often considered an essentialist approach which sees identity as a collection of static intrinsic attributes such as age, occupation, skin colour, native language and so forth. These attributes actively modifies the experiences that are stored in memory and recalled by individuals (Schlenker, 1985). The notion that one’s identity is based on intrinsic attributes also highlights the important role of body in determining one’s identity. For instance, under this 13

approach, one’s feminine and masculine identities are often considered something biologically driven. This essentialist approach to identity has characterized early research on identity. However, the emphasis on intrinsic attributes has been criticized since the interaction between individuals and social environment has been ignored. In discussing the problems of the essentialist approach to gender identity, Eckert & McConnell-Ginet argued that the approach would result in too much abstraction of gender from other important elements of social interaction which are closely related to gender (1998: 485):

The problem is too much or at least too-crude abstraction. Gender is abstracted whole from other aspects of social identity, the linguistic system is abstracted from linguistic practice, language is abstracted from social action, interactions and evens are abstracted from the communities in which they occur.

They believed that the absence of linguistic and social practices had made the characterizations of identity incomprehensive and unrealistic. Moreover, it often results in problematic categorizations, unnecessary gender or racial stereotypes and rejection of any behaviours which are not consistent with the intrinsic attributes of individuals (Cerulo, 1997; Duits, 2007; Fina et al., 2006; Livia & Hall, 1997). All these anti-essentialist view had prompted a shift from the essentialist perspective to a social constructionist perspective in the treatment of identity (Wetherall, 2002).

2.2.3

Social constructionist approach to identity The social constructionist approach to identity views the social world, 14

including ourselves as people, as the product of social processes but not something given by the nature (Burr, 1995). Erving Goffman was one of the earliest scholars who made attempts to describe the presentation of self from a constructionist perspective. In his classic book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman (1959. Cited in Bortree, 2005) referred to life as a stage and identity was the product produced by individuals’ ‘performance’ on the stage. Each performer uses a wide range of verbal and nonverbal strategies to construct and present self to the audience. This kind of performance involves interpretation of and adjustment to the environment around the performers. Different environments have different norms of behaviour. People, as successful performers, have to learn to read cues from the environment through their experiences and choose the kinds of behaviour that best suit the environments (Boyd, 2008). Goffman’s ideas have been influential in how sociologists and psychologists see interpersonal encounters in later research on identity. In concert with Goffman’s performative view of identity, many other researchers of identity proposed constructive views of identity. Stone (1981. Cited in Zhao et al., 2008), for instance, described identity as a social process that involves both the ‘identity announcement’ made by the individual claiming an identity and the ‘identity placement’ made by others who endorse the claimed identity, and the identity is established when there is a ‘coincidence of placements and announcements’. This also suggested that one’s identity claim is not fixed but changes over time in response to different social environments and others who endorse the identity claim. Miller & Jill (2001) pointed out that Goffman’s ideas have 15

contributed to a significant promotion of the constructionist approach to the exploration of identity, particularly among feminist and other post-structuralist psychologists who started to put more focus on social processes in different socio-cultural environments in their explanation of identity work in recent years. Social constructionism has informed much of the research on gender identity in recent years. A remarkable outgrowth of the adoption of social constructionism in the literature of gender identity is the rejection of traditional

binary

categorization

gender

identities

and

straightforward mapping of gender and linguistic practice (Livia & Hall, 1997). Many studies on gender identity have reported linguistic practices which are at odds with or do not match traditional gender association. For instance, Bergvall’s research on female engineering students in (1996) showed that female students displayed a wide range of speech behaviours that transcended easy boundaries: they could be as assertive and forceful as traditional masculine stereotypes at one time and very facilitative and collaborative like traditional feminine stereotypes at other times. Bergvall concluded that these changes in speech behaviours were the students’ accommodation to the changing demands in different conversations. Similarly, Cameron’s research on young men’s talk (1998) found that males did speak in ways not traditionally associated with males, for example, gossip-like discussion and highly cooperative speech in a private conversation. Instead of concluding that the males in her research were queers transcending gender categories, Cameron argued that the female associated speech acts enabled the young men to achieve some important 16

communication purposes like building group solidarity. Wetherall reported Hall’s study in which a male telephone worker used speech loaded with feminine characteristics to successfully pose as a female worker (1995. Cited in Wetherall, 2002). All these found that both females and males would adopt the stereotyped female and male linguistic features in interacting with others. These suggest that traditional female and male speech features exist in many individuals’ linguistic repertoire, regardless of sex. The employment of certain linguistic features is very context dependent. Conflicting gender roles should therefore not be considered a problem but a means to achieve certain purposes. Apart from work on gender identity, social constructionism has brought forward shifts in perspectives in work on racial, ethnic and national identity as well. Along with the general constructive turn, scholars of national identity and nationalism such as Alba (1990), Anderson (1991) and Waters (1990) began analyzing national forms of identity by studying shared meanings, symbols, discourses and practices by which individuals develop sense of themselves as a community. Attention was drawn to the symbolic meanings induced by some collective actions and significant political events. By taking a social constructionist approach to nationalism and a narrative approach to national identity construction, Kane (2000), for instance, explored how the Irish constructed their identity as part of a nation through their narratives which abounded with themes of the injustice of British and landlord domination and the rights of the Irish during the period of a war. Kane suggested that their understanding of selves was not based on fixed 17

categories such as race and religion but instead on narratives accounting shared experiences. These accounts symbolically represent their sense of national identity. Social constructionism continued to drive a multifaceted literature on ethnic, national and racial identity works which related identity to a wide array of linguistic practice and contextual elements. The above development has shown that social constructionism has enriched our understanding of identity in various fields. While supporting the anti-essentialist view of identity, many researchers of identity work have made effort to broaden the agenda of social constructionism (Cerulo, 1997). In recent years, social constructionists tried to explore the variation within identity categories more and they considered the variation was as important as that between categories. For instance, they started to note how elements such as race and social class would produce multiple variations of ‘women’ and ‘men’. In addition, stress is put on the idea of collective identity. It is suggested that the people’s engagement in various social activities with others produce ‘communities’. Members of the ‘communities’ would construct a sense of themselves and of others as certain kinds of persons collaboratively. The collaborative construction of identities is rooted with the shared norms and rules of the ‘communities’. This new conceptualization of identity gives rise to Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s notion of the community of practice (1990). This notion takes research on identity away from the context defined by a location or by a population to context defined by social engagement that is produced by interaction of individuals. Weber & Mitchell (2008) contended that such a conceptualization of identities helps connect social and individual 18

identities by considering identities in the context of the wider communities and circles of relationship. The notion of communities of practice would be dealt with in greater detail in the next chapter, as we look at how the notion could be a useful framework for us to understand identity work in blogs in a constructionist perspective.

2.3

Identity work in the online world With the emergence of digital media and the increasing usage among

people all over the world, there has been a growing interest among social constructionists in how the Internet provides new contexts which offers new opportunities to people to present and establish their identity. The current research explores identity work in blogs which are part of the wider online environments in the new digital world. It is therefore important to see how the social constructionist perspective of identity which has been successfully applied to face-to-face encounters could help understand identity formation in the digital world. There are several features of online interaction which make identity work in the digital world more versatile than face-to-face encounters. First, identity work online is far more liberating than face-to-face interaction since physical copresence is not required. Identity formation is therefore detached from our bodies. Disembodiment does not make identity formation difficult. Instead, it enables physically disadvantaged people to get rid of the obstacles (such as stigmatized appearance, stuttering, shyness, etc.) that obstruct them from constructing their desired identities in face-to-face setting (Miller & Arnold, 2001). This is particularly true in 19

anonymous online environment in which individuals come into contact with strangers. Without any prior knowledge of one another, participants of the anonymous interaction could only rely on online resources available to present themselves. More importantly, disembodiment makes embarrassment which is a symbol of a failing identity formation less likely to happen. This is because the slip-ups which often occur in impromptu face-to-face self expression can be avoided through deliberate selection of photos, constant revision and proofreading of the online messages. Besides, the absence of physical movements and gestures is made up by the wider array of expressive resources available online for identity formation. There are greater needs and more opportunities for us to employ textual and non-verbal resources such as texting style, vocabulary, the use of emoticons and layout of our avators to give more diverse forms of identity performance. Lastly, the possibility for individuals to interact with a larger group of people enables the formation of numerous online communities of practice for individuals to perform different forms of their identities. The advancement of technology such as the connection between mobiles, the Internet and online social networking applications further increases the opportunities and the participants involved in online interaction. All these make online interaction an integral part of our sense of selves. The features discussed above demonstrate that the online world would offer researchers an ideal context for researchers who take a social constructionist approach. The absence of bodies has made an essentialist approach to identity which relies on bodies and appearance to guide 20

identity work impractical. Instead, the stronger reliance on linguistic practice, the involvement of more participants, and the formation of various communities provide ample opportunities for researchers to explore identity formation.

2.4

The search for identity during adolescence Given the usefulness of online environment in exploring identity

construction, the current research will examine adolescent identity construction in a new kind of social environment in the online world – blogs. The literature on identity and adolescence has shown that these two notions are always bound together. Identity construction is present throughout the life cycle. However, it is particularly important during the stage of adolescence which refers to 10 to 22 years of age, during which time the main task that individuals have to confront is to define their identities (Erikson, 1968; Crowther, 1999; Buckingham, 2008). Gray (2005) described adolescence as being a stage in which a person is no longer a child and is far from being considered adults, but nonetheless possesses many of the qualities and responsibilities of both these groups. More importantly, they have to confront the questions about what aspects of identity they should develop in order to fit into the ever-changing world around them. Establishing a coherent identity is the fundamental task of adolescence (Erikson, 1968; McAdams, 1999; Numi, 2004; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008; Davis, 2010). Adolescents must establish a clear sense of who they are, what they believe in, and where they are headed. The search for identity can be understood as a result of significant biological, 21

academic, social and psychological changes during adolescence. In the following, some important elements of the changes are explored with respect to the context of Hong Kong.

Biological changes Biologically, according to Marshall (1978. Cited in Finkenauer et al., 2002), adolescents experience puberty which leads to a rapid acceleration in growth. There are significant changes in body shape and composition. Adolescents appear visually more adultlike. Such changes are important to identity formation not only because they affect adolescents’ physical characteristics and appearance, but they also preoccupy adolescents’ concern about others’ appraisal of the changes. More importantly, they start to formulate perceptions of ideal body images with reference to social norms and peer remarks (Chen & Jackson, 2009). Sometimes, changes which deviate from ideal images may result in depression and low self-esteem. Adolescents in Hong Kong are similar to their counterparts in western cultures in their concerns towards biological changes. Some earlier studies on Hong Kong adolescents have shown that local adolescents are highly concerned about their physical attractiveness when their bodies start to change over time (Sung et al, 2005; Lam et al, 2006; Xie et al, 2006; Cheung et al, 2007). For instance, the weight perception of most local adolescents, especially females, is not in agreement with their actual weight. This often results in inappropriate health control (Yue et al, 2010). The overemphasis on thinness among females and muscularity among males in mass media and the worshipping of idols with glamorous looks 22

have resulted in body dissatisfaction and weight preoccupation among local

adolescents.

Some

adolescents

who

have

extreme

body

dissatisfaction not dealt with properly may have high risks of suicide and poor health.

Academic changes Academic transitions during adolescence such as changes from primary to secondary education and from junior forms to senior forms in secondary education often bring about a number of changes that would affect how adolescents view themselves. For examples, the formation of new friendships, the preparation for public examinations and new teaching methods all make learning more competitive and challenging. Under such changes, adolescents are forced to re-evaluate themselves and their competence. In Hong Kong, for example, many developmental studies show that academic concerns are the most prominent and educational failure is often the strongest stressor (Chang et al., 2003; Chen, 2005; Hui, 2000). This can be attributed to the cultural context of Hong Kong education system and Chinese society. Since Hong Kong is an international and well-developed city, there is always a strong demand for labour with skills and knowledge of advanced levels. Education is key to higher income and better social status. Securing university degrees is often considered a stepping stone for prosperous career paths. However, the eight universities in Hong Kong only admit less than 20 percentage of the total number of secondary students every year. The inadequacy of university places has lead to keen competition. Moreover, streaming of 23

students based on academic excellence is an important attribute of local secondary education. Students are allocated to schools of different bands under the banding system with band 1 schools admitting students of the best academic performance and band 3 schools the lowest. What brings more pressure to academic performance is parents’ high expectation. Like most Chinese societies, academic excellence is considered to be a reflection of filial piety and hard work by seniors. Parents and teachers all have high expectations of their children and students. Academic performance is therefore always one of the greatest concerns for most Hong Kong adolescents and satisfaction with the performance can be an important aspect of their self concept.

Social and psychological changes In addition to biological and academic changes, adolescents have to face significant changes in interpersonal relationships. Going to secondary schools, adolescents will tend to spend more time with friends and peers and less time with their families, parents in particular. In addition to the single-sex relationship which was formed in primary schools, adolescents start to form cross-sex relationship and romantic relationships will also take shapes. Some previous studies have shown that the development of cross-sex relationship help adolescents to acquire important social and interpersonal skills (Bukowski et al., 1999; Collins, 2003; Connolly et al., 2000). Cheung’s & McBride-Chang’s studies on 300 Hong Kong secondary students (2007) found that adolescents who are able to develop cross-sex relationship are more likely to have high self satisfaction. They suggested 24

that the development of broader social relationships also makes adolescents more aware of others’ comments. As a result, they are more likely to compare themselves with their peers. All these establish a sense of self which focus on what they believe others expect them to be. They also start to look for social norms in the social world around them and then internalize or modify the norms to form their own beliefs and values. Meanwhile, they develop their own norms of interaction with peers in various situations. The norms could take the form of linguistic and non-linguistic practices which influence each other and are shared with others. The shared practices are also indicative of their attitudes towards social development and changes taking place in society. Regarding the tie with family members, previous studies on parental control and parent-child relation quality have shown that Hong Kong adolescents generally have positive perception of their relationship with parents and parental control (Shek, 2007). A contributing factor to this is that strong family values and belief are fundamental to Chinese societies. Adolescents are indoctrinated with the value of parental commitment throughout childhood. Apart from this, western religions such as Christianity also emphasize the importance of family love and care. A lack of parental care and support is often related to a number of adolescent problems such as poor academic achievement, use of drug and alcohol and suicidal attempts (Chan et al, 2009). In short, when becoming more adult-like, adolescents face immense changes on different aspects of their lives. Their beliefs and values will change accordingly to adapt to the changes. All these constitute complex 25

developmental tasks (Gray, 2005; Goya, 2008). It is therefore meaningful to see how blogs can offer an additional platform for Hong Kong adolescents to accomplish the tasks and overcome the problems peculiar to them amidst the changes.

2.5

Performing identity online during adolescence Psychologists working on adolescent development in the modern

world have adopted a contextual approach to understand the search for identity during adolescence. Erikson (1968), in his classic account of adolescent and identity development, stressed that adolescents develop a range of identity through interactions with different people in relation to specific settings. Identity is therefore ‘context-specific’ under this approach, which is in line with the socio-constructionist approach. The strong presence of the Internet and its tools in adolescents’ everyday life has caused many scholars to believe that identity construction take on new forms and meanings with the new contexts created by the wide range of online communication tools. Subrahmanyam (2007) contended that adolescents not only accounts for the largest proportion of Internet users, they are also among the most sophisticated users interacting with new technologies. It is generally argued that some features of the newly developed online environments favour identity exploration and experimentation among adolescents (Bortree, 2005; Bradley, 2005; Goya, 2005; Merchant, 2006; Sangha, 2008). First, online communication tools allow adolescents to address the identity challenges of emerging adulthood through 26

self-disclosure. By sharing their personal information and feelings, adolescents can clarify their sense of self and strengthen intimate relationship with their peers. In contrast to children, adolescents tend to spend more time with their friends than with their parents and other adults. Furthermore, adolescent friendships differ from childhood friendships. The former put stress on the recognition of mutual, intimate and reciprocal self-disclosure (Pempek et al., 2008; Davis, 2009). Other factors favouring the disclosure of personal information include the time lag between posts and feedbacks and the lack of visual clues. Second, adolescents are free to interact with people of all kinds in the online world. Once entering the world of the Internet, one can socialize with people ranging from acquaintances, close friends, colleagues, family members to strangers of different origins. This greatly increases the number of participants that could get involved in identity construction. Best and Kellner (2003) noted that the easy access to the Internet and the possibilities of identity experiments make the online world more appealing. Stern (2008) further added that the frequent use of the internet in one’s own room or other personal space allows internet users more freedom to manage their images presented online. However, as suggested by Livingstone (2008), despite the freedom offered by most online environment, adolescents’ online interactions are constrained by the norms and practices formed with or by their peers and the affordances of the online communication tools. Furthermore, the large pool of online participants forms numerous virtual communities which adolescents can identify with and this may 27

lead to the emergence of new social identities. Second, online environments are often not mediated by adults. This is important for identity work since the passage to adulthood requires a sense of independence. In the online world, adolescents can establish a self-controlled personal space which is free from parental control. They can choose what personal information to disclose, what friends to make and what relationship to maintain. Hence, going online gives adolescents more opportunities to develop greater sense of independence and autonomy. Online communication also offers adolescents different modes to create and convey identities. Multiple non-verbal features such as fonts, images and icons allow them to reveal and try out different attributes of their identity. According to Stacey (2008), this is particularly significant for individuals with socially inferior features such as physical disabilities. Many adolescents gain a sense of satisfaction from their ability to update, revise, delete or restart their sites for any reason at any time (Stern, 2008). The emergence of different forms of social media over the years has further encouraged adolescents to experiment with different strategies of identity performance. For instance, the easy uploads of photos onto personal homepages and blogs as a result of technological advancement and the easy access to digital cameras have increased the use of images along with caption-like texts to present different aspects of selves (Chittenden, 2010; Muratore, 2008). This is further popularized with the widespread use of Facebook which features convenient and mass uploads of photos among adolescents. The ever-changing nature of online 28

communication and the malleable identity formation are very alike. In addition to the above features, the online world can sometimes serve as ‘a shelter’ from stressful life events. Leung (2007), for example, conducted a research on Hong Kong adolescents’ use of the Internet. It showed that adolescent consumption of the Internet is significantly associated to stressful life events. When facing stress, adolescents tend to manage their unstable mood and compensate unhappy relations through seeking entertainment and building up new relationships in the online world. In his research project paper titled, Psychology of Cyberspace, Suler (2005) further detailed a list of psychological factors which encourage adolescents to engage in online identity experiments. These factors include anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, imagination, and equality among netizens. Suler suggested that these psychological facts would have a ‘disinhibition effect’ which motivates people to express themselves more freely than they would in the face to face world. Suler believed such a motivation could result in both positive and negative expressions. On the one hand, people may demonstrate unusual acts of kindness and generosity through revealing innermost emotions. On the other hand, some people might see the Internet as a dark world suitable for venting temper, spilling rude words and harsh criticisms. The kind of expression is once again closely related to a number of contextual factors including the personalities of the adolescents, the kinds of participants interacting with the adolescents and the online environment. In short, the unique combination of many features comes in play to 29

make the online world a good laboratory for identity experiments among adolescents. The current research will focus on one form of it – blogs.

2.6 2.6.1

Identity construction in blogs Defining blogs Among the rapid development of online communication tools, blogs

are one of the most popular ones. ‘Blogs’ is the short form of ‘Weblogs’. It first appeared in mid to late 1990s. At its simplest, blogs can be understood as frequently modified webpages which contain dated entries arranged in reverse chronological sequence (Hevern, 2004). People using blogs are commonly known as bloggers. Blood (2002) describes blogs in this way:

What [different types of blogs] have in common is a format: a webpage with new entries placed at the top, updated frequently – sometimes several times a day…weblogs are hard to describe but easy to recognize.

Herring & Paolillo (2006) stated that the reasons for the popularity of blogs are that they are easy, inexpensive, flexible and interactive self-publication for vast audience. The availability of many blogging tools such as Xanga and Blogger has made blogging more accessible to internet users. Since its appearance, three general types of blogs have emerged (Blood, 2002). The first type is Filters which provide links to and commentary on primarily news events or other topics. Notebooks are the second type which contains long entries that resemble a series of short stories. Personal journals, the third and most popular type, are composed 30

of short posts concerning the blogger’s life. Due to their prominence among local adolescents, the current research will primarily center on personal journals. Previous studies on blogs have identified five features of blogs that distinguish them from other modes of online communication tools (House, 2004; Bortree, 2005; Huffaker & Calvert, 2005; Doorn et al., 2007; Hindujaa & Patchin, 2008): Blogs are relatively easy to use since advanced knowledge of computer programming is not required; blog posts are easily added, modified and archived; bloggers can interact with blog readers easily through comments; and blogging communities can easily be established through blogrings (list of linked blogs); blogs are mainly devoted to writing about bloggers’ thoughts, emotions and events with longer posts. Many researchers have noted that the uniqueness of blogs has turned them into important tools in digital identity practices. Gurak (2008) discussed how blogs facilitate identity construction through changing the cultural environments in the following way:

Blogs (and social networking sites in general) illustrate the fusion of key elements of human desire—to express one’s identity, to create community, to structure one’s past and present experiences temporally—with the main technological features of 21st century digital communication (speed, reach, anonymity, interactivity, broadband, wide user base). In this sense, blogs can serve as a lens to observe the way in which people currently use digital technologies and, in return, transform some of the traditional cultural norms.

As such, it is believed that the examination of blogging among adolescents would yield useful information on new norms of identity construction in the modern world. 31

2.6.2

Writing diaries: from paper diary to public blogs The important role of blogs in identity construction can be seen in its

possibility to replace the role of paper diaries as important ‘transitional objects’. ‘Transitional objects’ refer to objects that facilitate adolescents to develop their identity (Goya, 2008). During their transition to adulthood, adolescents need transitional objects that can bridge the known world (family) and the unknown world (society). Paper diaries have a long tradition of being transitional objects for adolescents. Through writing diaries, adolescents can confirm the known world and make sense of the unknown world. They can also strengthen their self-esteem by recognizing her life events as worth recording. Besides being writers of their life events, adolescents can create different roles and voices. They can also insert dreams and fantasies into their real life events and develop self-identity. However, paper diaries have been superseded by the new digital form of diaries, blogs, in recent decades. More and more adolescents are carrying out their identity work with blogs. Bell (2007) discussed the two major approaches to focusing on different functions of weblogs. One can highlight the personal nature of blog entries by defining blogs as an online diary. On the other hand, one can view blogs as an updated list of links and commentary to some personal information online. This definition focuses on blogs as places to gather and share information. Bell argued that these different definitions have made blogs differ from paper diaries as they show the significance of blogs in blurring the boundaries between private and public spaces. They provide both private and public spaces for adolescents to carry out 32

identity work. Functioning like an online diary, blogs serve as private spaces where bloggers can freely use verbal and non-verbal cues to present different aspects of their identity. Meanwhile, blogs are also public spaces. When one posts his / her life events onto a blog, the posts become public and are available to both wanted and unwanted audiences within a second. This is unlike keeping diary entries safe with locks in private spaces. The presence of known and unknown members of audience will certainly affect the ways adolescents present their identities. This is a matter that will be discussed further in later sections.

2.7

Adolescent blogs and identity construction: An overview The special role of personal blogs in identity work has drawn the

attention of many researchers in recent years. Most studies suggest that adolescents do indeed perform identity work and maintain relationships using this new online platform.

2.7.1

Disclosing personal information in blogs As discussed above, blogs are basically a form of online diaries.

Researchers of early studies on adolescent blogging are therefore very interested in the ways by which the disclosure of personal information is done in blogs among adolescent bloggers. In contrast to the use of pen and paper in traditional diaries, blogs offer bloggers ample resources and functions to disclose themselves. Previous studies of blogs have constantly shown that an abundant amount of personal information is made available on blogs every day. 33

Many earlier researchers examined the disclosure of personal information by conducting analysis of the blog posts and profiles which are key elements of the blogs. Hevern (2004) was one of the earliest researchers to look at the disclosure of personal information by categorizing the self-focused posts of the adolescent participants in his research into narrations of daily life and disclosure of internal thoughts and feelings. He observed that many personal facts could also be traced through the online surveys or quizzes posted by the bloggers. Huffaker and Calvert (2005) compared gender differences in self-disclosure online and found that male and female teenagers presented themselves similarly in their blogs, often revealing personal information such as their real names, ages, and locations. Male teenagers were more likely than females to use emoticons and employ an active and resolute style of language. In another content analysis of blogs created by teenagers between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, Huffaker (2006) reported that the considerable amount of personal details disclosed including real name, age, location and contact methods. Everyday topics such as school, grades, college and romantic friendship dominate the narratives of the blogs. Some researchers found the style of writing in blog entries a more informative way to understand the bloggers. Fullwood, Sheehan & Nicholls (2009) analyzed the style, tone and format of several MySpace blogs. They found that sharing their everyday matters and expressing emotional feelings were two most important motivations for young bloggers. They also tended to present themselves in positive and semi-formal tone. 34

Apart from the blog post, attention has also been paid to some indirect ways through which personal information is disclosed. In his ethnographic study of blogs, Bortree (2005) examined a few teenage girls’ choice of colour and graphics for the layout of their blogs. In addition to personal facts, the girls also disclosed emotional changes during personal struggles and family interactions. Through a deliberate change of colour and graphics over times, the girls indirectly communicated their personality and values to seek affection and approval of others. The teenage girls also expressed a sense of belonging to their friends and closeness to each other by linking their blogs to others’ blogs. It was found that the girls tended to influence the content of each others’ posts. Laurence & Gestic (2005) studied the photographs found in fifty French teenage blogs. Various presentation strategies were identified from gestures and postures of the bloggers in the blogs. Posed photographs of various groups of friends were used to present various relationships. A more comprehensive analysis was conducted by Subrahmanyam et al. (2009) who seek to understand adolescent self presentation through coding blogger demographics and the content of the blog entries including style, themes, tone and format. Subrahmanyam et al. observed that the adolescents used textual elements more than visual elements to present themselves. Furthermore, the themes of their entries were reflective of the bloggers’ everyday life, peers, romantic relation and future-related matters, suggesting a close connection to developmental tasks during adolescence. Mazur & Kozarian (2010) went further from blog posts to the comments to analyze the blogs of emerging adults who used blogs to explore 35

self-presentation. Their findings indicate the number of comments and friends

vary

greatly

from

blogs

blogs.

When

comparing

self-presentation and peer interaction, they observed that most of the bloggers in the research engaged themselves more in presenting their identities than interacting with others through receiving and giving comments to others’ blog entries. They also noticed some differences in self presentation between adolescents of different ages. For instance, emerging adults aged 18 to 19 are more likely to describe academic and career goals in their entries than adolescents aged 15 to 17. The differences coincide with the major developmental tasks of adolescents and emerging adults. In view of the previous studies on blogs constructed by adolescents, it appears that there is mounting evidence of self-disclosure in blogs. In the blogging world, disclosing personal information is a shared norm and an important motivation for adolescent bloggers. It is generally agreed that the disclosure of personal information is positive to adolescent development since it could aid self-discovery, emotional expression and identity

construction.

House

(2004)

discussed

the

reasons

for

self-disclosure as a kind of norms established online by bloggers. She commented that there is an expectation of self-disclosure and if everyone is disclosing personal information, everyone will consider this safe. Moreover, to develop relationship with other bloggers or members of the audience, personal stories and intimate details of one’s life must be shared as this helps to gain trust from others (Stacey, 2008).

2.7.2

Gender differences in blogging

As discussed above in the development of identity studies, gender identities are often the interest of many researchers of identity in the everyday activities. The role of gender remains an important factor to consider when identity exploration goes online. While investigating blogging practices among different groups of adolescents, many investigators of blogs have tried to highlight any differences that female and male adolescents might have in presenting various aspects of their identities. One observation of gender differences in blogging is that many bloggers are adolescent girls. This is consistent with the popularity of traditional paper diaries among females. Huffaker & Calvert (2005) reported studies on blog population inhabited by young people and found that blogging split quite evenly between genders with slightly more female teenagers reported to be bloggers than male teenagers. An online survey on the blogosphere in Malaysia (Press Microsoft Malaysia. 2006) shows that women bloggers made up 64% of respondents, while men lagged at 36%. Nowson & Oberlander (2006) found that of the 71 bloggers in their corpus, there were 47 females and 24 males. In addition to the dominance of female in blogs, previous studies on blogging also reported gender differences in blogging behaviours which are consistent with previous studies on gender differences in the literature of gender identity and mainstream culture. For instance, girls in MySpace were reported to be affiliative and attractive in their online peer interaction whereas boys appeared stronger and more powerful in tones (Manago et al., 2008). More adolescent girls preferred using default 37

templates for the designs of their blogs than boys (Mazur & Kozarian, 2010). Despite the presence of differences, it is important to note that the blogs created by most male and female young bloggers are more alike than different as compared to the gender differences in other forms of communications. This might imply that the active participation of females in blogging has challenged some studies which suggested that the world of online media was dominated by males with more online academic papers published by male researchers and more frequent discussion of male topics in online news articles (Herring et al., 2004; Doorn et al., 2007). The performance of masculinity and femininity is also made more complicated with the disembodied online environment and the availability of a wider range of tools for identity performance. Hence, sexual identity work becomes more diffuse and heterogenenous. These have attracted many gender scholars to conduct research to understand gender conceptualization using online tools. In his research on British and Spanish personal weblog writing, García-Gómez (2009) demonstrated how teenage female possessed some traditional female qualities and fought for gender equality simultaneously through their accounts of romantic and broken love relationships. He suggested online identity work can provide insights into different schema of androgyny and the blurring gender boundaries. 2.7.3

Use of blogs among marginalized adolescents Further evidence for adolescent identity construction in blogs comes

from studies which focus on particular groups of adolescents. McGinnis et 38

al. (2007) explored three transnational youth’s uses of blogs to present their transnational identities. They pointed out that online tools like personal blogs allowed youth to engage in identity work that transcends geographic distances and boundaries. More importantly the youth in their study demonstrated the use of multiple forms of media and multiple forms of language in their online blogs to present their multiple identifications. Online constructions of identities which transgress traditional boundaries were also investigated. Rak (2005) described the practices of queer blogging using 40 queer blogs. He found that queer bloggers would document their queer experiences online to make their blogs read as queer to find similar people with similar interests within a community of other queer or queer-friendly bloggers. Williams (2007) analyzed the blogging activities of gay college age males between the ages of 18 and 25. It was found that the queer identity had a strong presence in some blogs but almost no traces in some blogs. For those blogs illustrating strong queer identity, different aspects of queer identity were integrated in the overall life narrative of the blogs. This may be resulted from an increasing level of societal acceptance of queer identity which in return boosts self-acceptance of the identity by the gay male bloggers. Sangha (2008) conducted a study to gain a greater understanding of the uses of an online social networking site, Nexopia, among marginalized adolescents with poor academic performances and disruptive behaviour. She discussed that communication with peers was the key factor motivating the marginalized adolescents to present themselves online. When presenting themselves, the adolescents wanted to construct unique images 39

which would not be rejected by the audience through including objects from popular culture in their blogs. The above review of previous studies shows that blogs can offer adolescents many opportunities to experiment with their identities. Blogging is beneficial for identity construction in many ways (Hindujaa & Patchin, 2008). First, blogs have provided a platform for adolescents to disclose a wide range of personal information and record important events. This can help adolescents to engage in internal dialogues and reflection on their values and beliefs in search of their identities. This is particularly important for presenting aspects of identities which are marginalized in real life or face-to-face interaction. Second, blogs allow adolescents to expand their social circles through participation in online communities which can consolidate friendship with peers and afford them more access to new relationships. This can enhance the social competence of the bloggers which is essential in the adolescent years. Third, despite the absence of real bodies, bloggers are encouraged to integrate multimedia and hypertext links into their presentation online. This may allow the bloggers to further emphasize certain aspects of their identity and make the presentation more dynamic. Blog visitors can be invited to experience the blog owners’ experiences in diverse ways. It is believed that all these can contribute to the formation of more coherent forms of identity.

2.7.4

Debate on online and offline identities

Despite the above consensus among researchers on the importance of blogs on identity construction, it is debatable whether the identity 40

constructed online is real or not. There remain doubts on the connection between the online identity and offline identity. Guy (2006) used the term ‘identity threat’ to discuss the worry of some researchers about the tendency to mistrust especially for cross gender or racial boundaries identity experimentation. Duits (2007) also discussed that the worry is particularly acute for gender identity and gender play online as one’s gender identity can be ‘chosen’ in the absence of embodied symbolic cues. Blinka and Smahel (2008) conducted an online survey on 120 experienced bloggers in the Czech Republic to see how frequent and what items of personal information younger adolescents tended to lie about online. It was found that most adolescents lie about partnership and their family situation while most of them were honest about age, gender and school related information. They contended that the tendency towards lying amongst adolescent bloggers can be connected to their ‘unexplained’ identity which usually ties with identity seeking and experimentation. While some researchers cast doubts on the reality of online identity presentation, some researchers believed that there is a close connection between online and offline identities. For instance, Larsen’s (2007) study on the use of blogs among Danish adolescents found that there was a strong sincerity discourse among the users and they sometimes collaborated to fight against users presenting ‘fake lesbians’ online. The disclosure of everyday life events is also considered evidence of bringing online identities closer to offline identities by some researchers (Bradley, 2005; Gray, 2005; Hindujaa & Patchin, 2008; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008). Larsen argued that most of the previous studies analyzed 41

adolescents’ online blogging in isolation without connecting the online discourse to the actual individuals who created them. This is supported by the fact that most previous studies were conducted with a small random sample of online individuals. Most researchers did not know the subjects and hence analyses were mainly based on virtual observation. Others, on the other hand, held another view on the lack of connection between online and offline identities. Talamo & Ligorio (2001) believed that comparing online activities to real-life activities is not a useful way to study identity. They provided definitions on the labels ‘virtuality’ and ‘reality’: The first exists when an interaction has concrete tasks and products in real life, whereas the second is addressed to interaction that could not be possible in real world due to distance or social boundary, for example. They suggested that these labels are no longer useful when the boundaries between real and virtual have started to blur as more online space is being used within a real and meaningful context. In their study on identity construction within an online learning community, Euroland, they described how participants of Euroland (students, teachers and researchers) used different strategies to negotiate different aspects of their identity based on the contextual features and the roles assumed by the participants within the context of the learning community. The findings of their study supported the view that identity construction is both context-shaped and context-renewing. The context available shapes the way identity is negotiated. Certain aspects of our identities are highlighted in certain context to achieve particular aims and enhance of the effectiveness of communication in the context. 42

Likewise, Livingstone (2008) and Subrahmanyama et al. (2008) argued that when online technologies have been thoroughly embedded in our everyday life, a simple distinction between offline and online worlds fails to capture the complex practices involved. Stern’s study (2008) on youth online authorship shows that many young people did not consider online identities fake. Instead, the majority view online identities, no matter how much they were ‘polished’, as authentic as their offline identities and sometimes even more representative of their ‘real’ identities. As a result, more attention should be paid to how contextual elements influence online identity performance. However, as we can see, these previous studies have mostly focused on the aspects of self presented online. Not much has been done to explore the link between the presentation and the context in which the presentation was done. This contrasts greatly with the constructive approach to identity, which examines identity formation with the wider context. The majority of studies have not addressed the communicative goals and the contextual factors that engineer the construction adequately. One important contextual element is audience – readers of the blogs.

2.7.5

Contextualizing identity performance It is generally believed that it is rather difficult to define what

comprises the members of audience, given that blogs are public platform (Klemen 2008). Bortree (2005) used the term ‘dual audience’ to describe the audience of blogs. He discussed the dual use of blogs as tools for interpersonal communication and mass communication. Members of 43

audience are mainly people known to the bloggers and people unknown to the bloggers. Most researchers of blogs believed that bloggers are aware of these two groups of audience and bloggers have to make decision on what different groups of audience expect them to do and what they would present in response to the expectation (Bradley, 2005; Merchant, 2006; Goya, 2008; Sangha, 2008). The findings of some previous studies could also support the view that adolescents would adopt strategies to negotiate the balance of self-presentation to friends and strangers in a public forum. Tice et al. (1995) studied the differences in the ways individuals present themselves to friends versus strangers and they found that individuals made more modest claims about themselves in the presence of friend and would be inflating their claims about self when no friends were present. Nardi et al. (2004) suggested that blogging is a very social process mainly because of the presence of audience who can interact with the bloggers. The teenage girls in

Bortree’s study (2005) would address the unknown audience by telling them that they might not be interested in the updated posts to direct them away from more personal posts. Stern (2008) further discussed the need for adolescents to look for audience to their inner voice. During their daily interactions with adults, adolescents lack opportunities to voice their opinions and ideas freely and publicly. Online communication tools such as blogs and websites have provided adolescents with a ‘public platform’ and audience of different backgrounds. The appeal of online audience can be seen from the various ways adolescents use to engage themselves in interactions with the audience. They may deliberately add function such 44

as ‘comments’ and ‘feedback’ to invite responses from audience. Besides, they can adjust the designs of the layout of the communication tools and incorporate new links to different audio images over time to make navigation interesting and keep audience coming back. Laurence (2006) even stressed that the success of a blog is measured by its audience: the number of comments posted by outsiders and number of quotations and borrowed visual material found in other blogs. Similar arguments are put forward by Miura & Yamash*ta (2007) whose survey of personal blog authors suggested that positive feedback from audience is a key psychological factor that strongly encouraged blog authors to continue writing. Strano (2008) also discussed how comments from members of audience could influence internet users on their choice of photographs in their profile pictures. The identity performance online could be further contextualized by a shift in the participation roles of the bloggers and the audience during their interaction online. Previous studies on participation framework have proposed that a speaker will assume different roles of participation through various linguistic and paralinguistic means in order to involve themselves more in the interaction (Goffman, 1981; Goodwin, 1984; Koike, 2001). In disclosing their personal information and in responding to the comments by audience, the bloggers are themselves audience of their own self-disclosure. Meanwhile, in commenting on the bloggers’ disclosure, the audience are disclosing their thoughts and different aspects of themselves. Their disclosure may enable them to assume the role of the ‘narrator’ of new interactions developed from the interactions initially narrated by the bloggers.

These concerns over contextual elements are drawing the attention of most researchers of blogs and other forms of computer-mediated communication (Hevern 2004). They also bring the issue of online identity construction more in line with the context-centred social constructionist approach to identity. Building on the available body of research and guided by the social constructionist approach to identity, the current study aims to fill the research gap by situating online identity construction by adolescents in blogs within a wider context which is jointly produced by the nonymous audience and the bloggers. The nature of such a context will be explored in greater detail in the next chapter.

Chapter 3

Analytical Approach and Data Collection 3.1

Analytical approach

3.1.1

Social constructionist approach As reviewed in the previous chapter, a social constructionist approach

has been widely adopted in the recent studies on identity formation. In keeping with the recent development in the literature, the present research adopts a social constructionist approach to understand the identity work of adolescents in the online blogging world. Under social constructionism, most researchers of identity studies now view identity not as concrete and biologically given categories but socially constructed categories. Building on Goffman’s conceptualization of everyday identity formation as performance, scholars started to explore different forms of identity, attending more to the contextual elements such as the linguistic practices and the roles of individuals that constitute any particular instance of social interaction. The current study will adopt such a constructionist perspective with a focus on the role of nonymous context in the identity construction among a group of Hong Kong adolescents. In analyzing the nonymous context, the notion of communities of practice, which was developed from the social constructionist framework, will be used.

3.1.2

Communities of practice The notion of Communities of Practice was first developed in the

research on education by Wenger (1998). With its stress on the importance of interaction between individuals in the construction of identity, it has been widely adopted by social constructionist researchers to investigate identity issues. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet have particularly highlighted the importance of this notion in the understanding of language and identity through applying it to various studies concerning language and gender identity (Eckert, 1990; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1992 & 1995; Eckert, 1996). Developing from the criteria spelt out by Wenger, Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (1998:490) concisely defined a community of practice as mainly a community defined by social engagement:

A community of practice is an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in some common endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, […] practices – emerge in the course of their joint activity […]. There are five fundamental dimensions making a community of practice a social construct different from the traditional notion of community defined by a location or by a population (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998; Meyerhoff, 2003; Paechter, 2003).

Negotiation of meanings In a community of practice, individuals define who they are through participation in the community. The participation takes the form of mutual engagement. Through getting together and interacting with other 48

members of the community, the individuals negotiate a kind of experience which is shared among the members and helps the members to explore themselves and construct a sense of themselves. It is, however, essential to note that the mutual engagement is not necessarily a harmonious one. It can take place even among members who are in conflictual relationship. Moreover, the members can acquire different membership statuses according to their degree of engagement. A prolonged engagement can change a ‘peripheral member’ to become a ‘core member’. The study of the construction of Italian identity in an all-male card playing club by De Fina (2007), for instance, shows Italians living in Washington, the USA, engage in ethnic identity construction through getting together monthly to play card games. The games were competitive in nature but the competitors mutually constructed some shared practices when playing the games and addressing each other.

Practice as a Source of Coherence of a Community A community of practice is not defined so much by the members but by the practices that all the members share when they participate in the community. The shared practices constitute shared stories, inside jokes, jargons and shortcuts to communication which are developed and mutually constructed through the negotiation of meanings among the members over a certain period of time. The practices may be heterogeneous with certain variations among members but the variations shall not be too deviant because the shared practices help members to gain a sense of coherence and reflect a certain perspective of the world. Furthermore, linguistic practice may not be the only resource employed 49

by the members to convey meaning. It is usually combined with nonlinguistic resources such as body movements, habits, dressing codes, etc. to create a style of communication rich in social meaning and deployed for multiple purposes. For instance, Bucholtz (1999) reports how a small group of uncool girls tried to differentiate themselves from other girls in high school through developing a repertoire of linguistic practices (fronting vowels) and non-linguistic practices (demonstrating a taste for reading and verbal play).

Practice as a Learning Process The community of practice is in itself a learning process. The shared practices are the products of the learning process. Such products are dynamic and constantly changing as members bring in more experiences and the memberships continue to change over time. In other words, our sense of selves which is constructed through the shared practices of the community will also change over time. This progressive nature of the community of practice has made it a suitable framework for the study of individual and community-wide processes of language change. In her research of three groups of adolescents studying in the Detroit suburbs, Eckert (1995) found that the adolescents who had different attitudes towards school values and maintained different social ties indicated different senses of social innovation and conservatism through their choice of innovative and conservative variants of the vowels which were undergoing a shift in the district.

Identity as a Nexus of Multimembership Individuals do not just belong to one community. Instead, they can be members of multiple communities. The membership in any community of practice is only a part of an individual’s identity. Moreover, members could leave a community of practice when they no longer take up the shared practices of that community. Meanwhile, the shared practices of one community could influence those of another community. These also imply that the construction of identity becomes more flexible and versatile. Using this framework, researchers could explore how different aspects of individuals’ personal identities are influenced by the shared practices of various communities of practice that the individuals belong to. For example, the card players in De Fina’s research (2007) negotiate identities of various kinds in different situations of the card games they engaged in. When playing the games, they presented situational identities such as card players, treasurers or presidents which were further personalized in relation to the players’ ethnic or gender identities.

Identity as an Intersection between the Local and the Global The communities of practice do not exist in a vacuum and in isolation. They are influenced by the mass media and popular culture in the rest of the world. In particular, the communities will intersect with some broader cultural beliefs, values and practices. The selection of certain shared practices do not just convey aspects of individuals’ personal and group identities but also demonstrate the social roles of the individuals in wider social networks. Mendoza-Denton (1997) showed that the speakers in her research participated in vowel shifts not only to show their fashion 51

sensibilities and coolness to their peers but to convey their decision to get involved in local gangs to a wider group of people in society.

Many recent studies on identity have shown that these dimensions of the concept of the community of practice could provide researchers with new insights into the ways identity is constructed. It has supplemented the weaknesses of other concepts of identity such as speech community and social identity by enriching our understanding of identity work in various ways (Holmes, 1999; Eckert, 2003; De Fina, 2007). First, by defining social grouping in terms of shared practice, this approach has made the connection between personal and group identities possible. Different aspects of identities could impact upon one another to project images which are most reflective of the discourse that individuals are participating in. Second, the coexistence of various communities of practice under this approach allows researchers to take the influence of ‘outsiders’ into consideration and widen the perspectives of identity construction. This can help explain heterogeneous identity performances among members adopting similar practices. Third, with its emphasis on the negotiation of meanings as a learning process, this concept could extend the social constructionist approach to identity work. Meanings are not just produced among individuals at a point of time but over a period of time during which the community of practice is sustained and members change their statuses. Such a diachronic nature of identity construction could provide insights into language and social changes.

There are some other advantages of such a conceptualization of the 52

online blogging activities. Since the community is defined by mutual engagement in shared practices, there is an absence of physical boundaries and fixed membership. This can extend traditional research on identity construction in physical face-to-face environment to the boundless and abstract online world. Moreover, the absence of boundaries enables the overlapping of online and offline communities of practice. This further enables the members to bring their offline practices to the online world and widen the possible means by which identity is constructed. As discussed in the literature review, adolescence is a period of identity search. There is a wide inventory of identities available for adolescents to explore. When identity construction in the blogging world is treated as interactive tasks negotiated by the adolescents under the concept of community of practice, we could identify the aspects of identity which are the most salient to the adolescents in the online world through investigating how the shared practices are developed with other members. Besides, since the negotiation of meanings is connected with the members’ practices in other communities of practice, the examination of identity could be expanded from one online network to another and to a wider social network. More importantly, the shared practices of a community of practice constitute both linguistic and non-linguistic practices. This is significant as non-linguistic practices are playing a more important role in the communication of the adolescents with the penetration of the internet in every aspect of their lives. Different online platforms offer different set of tools for adolescents with mutual engagements to form diverse shared practices. The identity work of the adolescent bloggers in the current 53

research will therefore be examined with reference to the textual and visual and graphic elements available in the blogs.

Given the above strengths of the notion of community of practice within the social constructionist approach to identity work, the current research would conceptualize the adolescents’ engagement in online blogging as a community of practice. For instance, we could see that the adolescents do not randomly construction aspects of themselves. Instead, they construct the aspects of selves in response to the needs of the audience of their blogs who make up important members of the blogging community. For instance, the majority of blog content is closely connected to the offline school context that the bloggers and the audience are associated with. In analyzing the linguistic and paralinguistic resources adopted by the adolescents to perform identity work, I will discuss how the resources are mutually negotiated by the bloggers and other members. For example, informal language, emoticons, insider jokes, intimate body movement and supportive remarks are shared among the bloggers and audience. The use of these common resources could be attributed to the presence of mutual engagement among the members of the blogging community. Besides, the events like international sports events and natural disaster of the wider social community in which the bloggers and the audience exist exert influence on their choice of resources such as the dominance of Chinese and the aspects of selves such as the national identity as a Chinese. In sum, the concept of communities of practice, which underlines close interaction between bloggers, is a powerful analytical tool for us to understand identity work in the blogging world. 54

3.2

Selection of participants: from unknown bloggers to known

bloggers The current research includes a collection of 20 blogs authored by Hong Kong adolescents aged between 16 and 18 from September 2009 to January 2010. Among them, 11 were girls and 9 were boys. These adolescents were studying Secondary 5 in a band 1 Christian school at Shatin with English as the major medium of instruction during the research period. All of them had high Internet usage at school and at home. They could get easy access to computers and the Internet in four special computer rooms at school during lunch time and after school. Moreover, all of them reported that they had their own personal computers at home. Similar to most adolescents in the literature, they use computers for both instrumental and communication purposes. While searching for information and obtaining knowledge useful for their studies, they are using various online social media, for example, Instant Messaging, emails, blogs, Facebook, and sometimes online games. They are all sophisticated Internet users with little difficulties in engaging in online communication. Since all the participants were born and have been growing up in Hong Kong with Cantonese as their first language, they expressed that Cantonese was their primary medium in using online social media. All of them are competent enough to use Chinese character inputting methods. Like most Chinese in Hong Kong, they habitually type English letters while inputting Chinese characters. Cantonese-English mixed code is therefore found throughout the blog entries archived. Given that code-mixing and code-switching practices are not the focus of the present 55

study, language use will not be a criterion for the selection of entries in order to reflect more comprehensive blogging practices among the subjects. Access to participants is often considered difficult in most previous studies on blogging. This difficulty can be overcome in the current research as the researcher and the participants have a teacher-student relationship. It is hoped that the current research can fill the gap in the literature of blogging and identity by integrating the bloggers’ interpretation in the understanding of online identity work. The researcher has been communicating with her students using blogs for years. She selected some blogs which are frequently updated by the students she was familiar with during the research period. She then invited students to participate in the research on a voluntary basis. Students who were willing to participate were asked to sign consent forms. The familiarity with the bloggers allows the researcher to view the blog entries by connecting the aspects of identity presented online with those in the offline world. Another advantage is that the researcher’s prior knowledge of the people interacting with the bloggers and the school context can help explain some instances of identity performance. Even for details not known to the researchers, explanation can be elicited in the face to face interview that followed. A limitation of the familiarity is that the authoritative position of the researcher as the bloggers’ teachers may influence the ways the bloggers present themselves. They may choose to hide certain qualities from the teacher’s observation and some of them may not feel comfortable with the disclosure of personal information to adults. However, the student interviewees generally did not perceive the 56

teacher interviewer to be intimidating since the teacher was not teaching the participants any subject in the year when the blog entries were extracted and when the interviews were conducted. Moreover, the interviews were conducted in March 2010 when they had almost finished their study and were preparing for the public examination. These kept the influence of teachers on the construction of answers to minimum. To encourage voluntary participation, participants were given informed consent letters which comply with the ethical principles of the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Hong Kong and clearly state how the personal information would be used and the disclosure would not affect the participants at school. Moreover, participants were informed that they would not be identified by any real names in the report of the research and their appearances in the images of the research data would be blurred to hide their identity. They may choose to withdraw from the research and the subsequent interviews without any consequences later. Adolescents who agreed to participate would give the researcher the links to their blogs. To further minimize the impact of teachers’ observation of their blogs, only the blog entries produced prior to the invitation to participate in the research were considered. Participants were also encouraged not to lock their blogs for the researcher’s free access to the blogs later.

3.3

Locating active and related blogs In order to focus on adolescents who have sufficient blogging

experience, only blogs which had been created for over 3 years were further selected for the study. Moreover, to enrich the data available for 57

analysis, the blogs are selected on the basis of frequencies of updates and number of entries posted. Blogs which have been abandoned or not frequently updated (such as one entry per year) were excluded. It is likely that the bloggers have shifted to a new blog or stopped blogging for some unknown reasons. Blogs and bloggers which were connected to one another were also selected with priority for investigation of interaction between bloggers who are known to each other in a nonymous context. The connection was identified in two ways: first, the subscription list on the first page of each blog indicates other blogs that the blog owner will visit. The participants of this research were chosen because their blogs appeared in one another’s subscription list and this suggests that these participants may engage in blogging activities together. Second, when bloggers leave comments on others’ blogs, their account names will also appear on the blogs along with their comments. The number of comments left can inform researchers of the closeness between the blogger and the visitor. By using these two ways, the researcher traveled from one blog to another to identify the students who were connected to one another online.

3.4

Examining the blog service provider: Xanga The blogs of the current research are all taken from a blog service

provider, Xanga. This provider was originated in the USA and is not specifically designed for Hong Kong people. The majority of studies on the blogging and computer-mediated communication have shown that Xanga is the blog service provider primarily used by most Hong Kong people (Tse, 2008). In his research on blog service switching in Hong Kong, 58

Zhang et al. (2008) found that over half of the respondents were using Xanga. Another research on the features of weblogs conducted by Ip & Wagner (2008) also reported that the number of Hong Kong users of Xanga was over 212,000 which was about 6% of Hong Kong’s Internet user population. According to the participants in the current research, Xanga is the blog service provider used by most of their friends and they were not familiar with other service providers such as LiveJournal and MySpace, which were commonly used by the participants of most previous studies on blogs and identity. The adolescents of the current research were mainly attracted by Xanga’s fashionable templates and designs of functions. Another important factor influencing their choice of or switch to Xanga is to gain easy access to others’ blogs through using the same service provider as most of their friends. They found it very inconvenient to get used to different functions in different blog sites. Therefore, they all signed up for the same blog service provider eventually for more convenient communication online.

3.5

Data analysis After selecting the 20 blogs which are the most suitable for the

research, the blog entries of the 20 blogs were saved in Microsoft Word format for archive. To ensure privacy of the adolescents participating in the present study, the entries in the archive were slightly modified. Pseudonyms have been used to replace the real names of the adolescents. Personal information of the adolescents has also been changed slightly to avoid the disclosure of any private details. Besides, faces of the adolescents and their peers in any images extracted from the blogs have 59

been blurred. With the archive composed, the blogs selected for the current research were then analyzed. In analyzing data collected from online social media for identity work, various

quantitative

and

qualitative

research

methods

such

ethnography (e.g. McLellan, 2006; Larsen, 2007), quantitative and qualitative context analysis (e.g. Almjeld, 2008; Mazur & Kozarian, 2010), questionnaires (e.g. Karlsson, 2007; Zhang et al, 2008) and online and offline interviews (e.g. Muratore, 2008; Stern, 2008) were employed in the literature. According to Greenfield & Yan (2006), the emergence of these different research methods is necessary for collecting data from the Internet and analyzing the data for different purposes. The current research takes a qualitative approach to the data collected from blogs. The reasons are twofold. First, the results generated by any quantitative approaches can be undermined by dynamic interaction in the online world. The number of adolescents participating in blogging is uncountable. Besides, an individual adolescent can create more than one blog to carry out different sorts of identity experiments and one can even choose to switch from one blog service provider to another. It is therefore very difficult to assemble a reliable pool of blogs and to conduct analysis which is representative of most adolescent bloggers. Second, the statistic data produced by quantitative methods bear little connection between the online activities in blogs and the actual individuals since the data was collected by random sampling of blogs online from some blog service providers (e.g. Aten, 2007; Herring et al, 2007; Fullwood et al, 2009). The blogging practices from previous studies are mainly interpreted from the view of the researchers who know little about the authors of the blogs. 60

Moreover, the quantitative methods adopted in many previous studies have drawn very similar conclusion in regards to the frequency of posts and certain themes of blog entries and the disclosure of personal information. These seem to provide evidence of some practices which are universal across the blogs available but not a close reading of how the practices are being carried out in different ways in different contexts. Given these two reasons, the current study focuses on identifying a group of experienced adolescents whom the researchers have easy access to and uses a qualitative approach which combine virtual analysis of the texts and images embedded in blogs and interviews with the blog authors to enrich the comprehension of online identity presentation.

3.5.1

Analysis of blog elements The blogs were first examined in two stages. First, the selected blogs

were analyzed structurally. The blogs established in Xanga contain a range of textual, graphical and interactive components. The components which were most commonly used among the bloggers were isolated. The following are the structural elements of blogs that participants in the current research frequently employed in the presentation of their desirable qualities:

Textual elements a.

Account names

They usually comprise a series of English letters and numbers. There are various arrangements of the English letters. Most of them are taken from the real English names of the bloggers, combining the last names and 61

surnames. Some are the initials of the bloggers’ English names. Sometimes, some other words are added to the account names to present some more information about the bloggers. The following are some examples.

User names

Information

Mary1115, wilson_cookie220

Dates of birth

davidchan2a

Level of studies

pyc09024

Name of their school : “pyc” is short form of Pui Ying College

no_fear_MING,

Personalities

GET_FREEDOM_JOHN arsenalforever_dave, loveSimpsonsMaria

Favourites e.g. football teams and cartoon characters

kelvinchanhk

Identity as a Hong Kong resident

Profile

The profile of the blogs is the starting point for the blog visitors to get to know the bloggers. Personal information disclosed in the profile includes bloggers’ full names, birthday, gender, email addresses, interests and pictures which are shown as thumbnails on others’ blogs. Among the blogs observed, bloggers’ names, gender and the thumbnails have the most appearance.

Subscription list

The subscription list is a list of account names which can link to different blogs. The bloggers can ‘subscribe’ to the blogs that they are interested in or frequently visit and then the account names of the blogs will appear on the list randomly.

Blogrings

What follow the subscription list are blogrings which are ‘groups’ or ‘communities’ that the bloggers belong to. The words used in the blogrings comprise the names of some social groups and the years in which they establish. By clicking the blogrings, one can see lists of bloggers who have joined the blogrings.

Archive of past postings / Posting Calendar

This part is usually in the form of a calendar by which visitors of blogs can choose a date and trace the postings the bloggers have on that date. One can also know the number of entries written by the bloggers each month.

Dated entries

They are the textual elements (occasionally accompanied by visual-graphic elements) that take up most space in all blogs. They start with a date and usually a topic summing up the content of the entries. The length of the entries varies from one word to long paragraphs. The entries are usually displayed in reverse chronological order.

Visual-Graphic elements a.

Images

Images found in the blogs consist of three types. The first and most commonly used type is emoticons. They usually appear together with the text in the entries of all the blogs. They are images of faces representing different emotions. The second type is other images which are cartoons 63

and animated pictures. These two types usually help the bloggers to express feelings and they are also popular in other means of online social networking tools such as email and MSN messenger. The last type are photographs of real people and objects. They are usually displayed with captions which guide the readers to see the pictures and provide more information about the images.

Background images

What make each blog distinctive are the background images used by the bloggers. The service provider, Xanga, has some pre-set background images for the bloggers to choose from so that they can create a blog with the layout and images arranged in consistent fashion. The bloggers, on the other hand, can also design their own background images which best project their moods and personalities.

Background music

Bloggers can add background music which matches the background images. They can choose one song which is constantly played when their blogs are being read or they can insert a mini-music player which contains a list of songs chosen by the bloggers. The visitors can choose the background music from the list.

Interactive elements a.

Contact: E-mail address

Most bloggers in the research includes their email addresses in the profile of the blogs for further online contact outside the blogs. The email 64

addresses are usually the ones that the bloggers use for MSN.

Comments

The most direct way to interact with the bloggers is to give comments on the entries. Visitors of the blogs usually leave very short messages for the comments. There is no limit to the number of comments each entry can carry. The number of comments for each entry is shown at the end of the entry. It can vary from zero to sometimes ten or more, depending on the content of particular entries.

The second part of the virtual observation involves a content analysis of the entries in all the blogs. The entries in the archive were read through by the researcher to identify entries or parts of the entries that illustrate positive qualities of the bloggers. The content analysis here mainly focused on the commonly used textual, visual-graphic and interactive elements identified in the first part. Qualities which were frequently observed across the blogs are categorized and representative postings of each category were selected. In order to obtain the collective postings between the bloggers and the blog readers, the researcher will use the links of the blogs and visit the blog pages from time to time to extract relevant postings. These postings were later included to examine the interaction between the bloggers and their audience in the construction of desirable qualities.

3.5.2

Interviews After analyzing the elements in blogs, interviews were conducted to 65

elicit the participants’ perceptions of their blogging experiences. The interview questions were mainly based on the Interview Protocol developed by Ellison, et al. (2006). The reason for using this protocol is that most of the questions included in the protocol were informed by literature on online identity construction. In addition, open-ended questions about the bloggers’ background information and their blogging experiences were included. This allows the bloggers to freely share their thoughts and experiences of blogging with the researcher. Not all the questions in the protocol were used in the current research as the protocol were initially developed for online dating among adult Internet users in social networking sites. Only those questions related to identity construction and online experiences were kept. It is hoped that the modified Interview Protocol could enable the researcher to explore the diverse ways in which the participants made sense of their experiences of blogging. Moreover, some questions were added to the protocol based on the virtual observation of the participants’ blogs. For instance, some participants were asked to talk about some postings which are of the researchers’ interest. A full list of the questions used in the interviews is found in Appendix.

Chapter 4

On the stage: Identity performance in blogs

In the previous chapter, we have discussed how online identity work could be examined using a social constructionist perspective with the application of the notion of communities of practice. We now take a close look at the blogs written by a group of Hong Kong adolescents. Situated within a constructive perspective, the study will first analyse the environment in which blogging takes place. It is important to note how the environment will determine the kinds of contextual factors influencing identity work and the kind of community of practice that will emerge. After gaining an understanding of the context of the blogging activities, we will then proceed to examine how the adolescents construct different forms of identity which manifest their engagement in the blogging community of practice during adolescence.

4.1

Blogs as a nonymous environment As mentioned in Chapter 1, two main kinds of online environment

are identified in the literature of computer-mediated communication: anonymous and nonymous environments. These two environments are defined by the intended audience. The former one refers to those social media by which individuals mainly interact with others who are strangers to the individuals in face-to-face encounters. The latter one describes the 67

social media which allow individuals to communicate with people they get know in face-to-face encounters. The blogs in the present study can be considered a kind of nonymous environment as most students’ blogs are written with the intended audience as people whom the students are familiar with. This is evident in the first entry of most blogs observed. Most students talked about the purposes of starting their blogs in the first entries. They usually use a few sentences to ‘announce’ the opening of their blogs and use ‘you’ to address the audience. Although they do not explicitly mention who ‘you’ are, it is understood that ‘you’ mainly refer to the blog owners’ friends as the responses by ‘you’ can show that ‘you’ are enthusiastic about the start of the blogs and familiar with the blog owners (see Examples 1, 2 and 3).

Example 1 大家好….呢個就係我新 xanga.. Hello…This is my new xanga… 如果可以既話就將我呢個 xanga Please post the link of my xanga 條 link post 去你地自己 xanga on your xanga if possible 等未知既人都知啦... So that more people know my xanga

Example 2 Welcome to Xanga! Congratulations on your first post! :) 哈哈.... 記得打多 d 啦 =] 等我幫你 =P

Haha… Remember to type more =] I will help you to post the link =P

The student in Example 1 invites ‘you’ to post the link of his blog on 68

their blogs to make his blog more popular. ‘You’ responds to the student positively and expresses support for his use of Xanga by posting the link of his blog in other blogs. This can also help increase the number of readers reading the blog.

Example 3 Welcome all of you to visit here. As now is during examination, I don't have enough time to type the diaries. After the examination, I will start typing the diaries. As 2007 has been come already, wishing you have a wonderful year and Happy New Year. All of you have a fantastic outcome for the exam. Please work hard and be clever and answer the questions carefully during exam. Besides, overcome all the difficulties, don't think that you cannot do that! I trust that you may have the result that you are satisfied if you were trying your very best! Please remember the following sentences, 'Never give up!' and ' You are not the worst one!', believe that the Lord would always blesses you all! Try to encourage the others around you! Written by Peter Cheung on 6th December 2007 Good luck to all of you!

The above student has used a number of ‘you’s in the first entry of his blog which expresses his best wishes to friends in the coming examination and in the new year. From his description, it is understood that the ‘you’ are his friends at school who are also working hard to prepare for the examination. The use of ‘all of you’ also implies that he perceives his friends to make up all the members of audience who he is going to interact with in the blogging world. 69

The identity of the audience is not only hinted by the use of ‘you’ in the first entry but also in other entries. The bloggers use ‘you’ to show their intention to involve the audience to give response to their accounts. In most cases, only schoolmates who also take part in the activities in the accounts are eligible to give response. In Example 4, the student talks about an after-school basketball match. She asks the readers to have a guess on the words used to cheer the classmates. It is obvious that ‘readers’ here are assumed to be her classmates who took part in the competition and have the common knowledge of the nicknames of their classmates.

Example 4 放學的班際籃球比賽好睇的! 最好笑係 d 女仔係咁諗口號黎幫 4e 打氣仲會叫佢地 d 花名見到陳大文會嗌杉菜見到 ben chan 會嗌江若琳見到 ah 肥,,你地估下叫咩? 我地叫耶穌...講完我地笑出黎=)

The basketball match after school is awesome! The funniest thing is how the girls used slogans to describe 4e students Their nicknames were used ! When they saw Chan Tai-man, they shouted Choi Whey they saw ben chan, they shouted Elanne Can you guess what they said when they saw ah Fei? We all shouted Jesus…we couldn’t help laughing

Students also admitted the important role of friends as the intended audience of their blogs in the interview. All of them said that they opened their blogs mainly to communicate with their friends consisting of their 70

schoolmates whom they saw at school every day and distant friends with whom they do not interact face-to-face every day. It is interesting to note that they all started their blogs at a similar time - 2 years ago when they were in Form 2 and blogs became popular among adolescents. As most of their friends started opening blog accounts to interact online, they expressed the need to ‘catch up’ with their friends by joining the blogging activities. To prepare for better access to their friends’ blogs, they would do two things. First, they would choose the blog service provider which was used by most of their friends. A student said she deliberately shifted from one service provider to Xanga because she knew most of their friends were using Xanga. She said she would be the odd one out if she was using a blog with totally different settings and templates. By using the same service provider, the student hoped to share the ‘language’ and ‘tools’ of blogging. Second, they would use account names which are close to their real names so that their close friends could recognize them online and distant friends could locate them in the search engine easily:

‘Obviously, it is pointless opening an account using pseudonyms and then none of your friends at school recognize you. I start blogging simply because I hope to connect with my friends.’

In choosing the most popular service provider and most easily recognized account names, the students were trying their best to set their stage – Xanga – which facilitates the performances of their qualities to their intended audience later.

The students are not only aware of the intended audience of their blogs but also the needs of the audience. During the interview, the students gave several examples to show they try their best to cater for the needs through the choice of medium and the design of the entries:

‘I actually like typing in English because it is easier than using Chinese inputting methods which I’m not familiar with. However, I know that most of my classmates are poor in English and they definitely will not read my blogs if I write everything in English. That’s why I do make my English entries short and write in Chinese occasionally to keep them interested in my blogs.’ ‘It’s very boring to type words only in blogs so I always include some photos and change the background of my blogs. I know my friends like seeing photos so I will always use my digital camera to take pictures at school so that I can insert some interesting photos in my entries.’

The identity of the audience is also evident from the feedback left by the readers in most blogs. As seen in previous examples, the bloggers do invite feedback from the readers of their blogs who are meant to be their friends. The feedback in the blogs sampled shows that the intended friends, such as those who are familiar with the bloggers or have knowledge of the events mentioned in the entries, do ‘accept’ the invitation and give feedback. This is further illustrated in the more examples to be discussed in this chapter. One may, however, argue that unknown and unfamiliar visitors can ‘drop in’ and view the blog entries, given that the Internet world is open to all and there is free access to all the blogs. Though the trace of unknown visitors is found in the blogs, these 72

unknown visitors do not actively take part in the blogging activities of the blogs such as leaving comments which would lead to interactions with the blog owners. According to the students, comments left by strangers are sometimes found in their blogs. Two students did have their blogs intruded by strangers once:

‘I talked about something related to Christianity in my blog as I’m a Christian and then a man left his comments on my blog to promote his religion in a polite way. I then clicked his account name to go to his blog but there’s not much information about him. And, he did not leave any other messages.’ ‘I once got a person that I didn’t know leaving me comments. He / She’s trying to give me advice on how to solve the problems that I mentioned in my blogs. I went to his / her blog but there was no entry and I couldn’t figure out who he / she was.’

In both cases, the strangers only left very short comments which do not mean to attack them or to make friends with the students. On the other hand, the students concerned did feel curious about the identities of the strangers and they would go the blog linked by the account names to learn more about the strangers. However, they were not interested in giving any feedback to the strangers’ comments or in leaving feedback in the strangers’ blogs as they have no intention to start any new friendship online through blogs. Besides, most of the bloggers in this research use a function called ‘Signin Lock’ which can help the blog users to track down visitors viewing their blogs and block people who are not familiar to the bloggers from viewing the blog content. 73

Tom Yung

The Signin Lock used by one of the bloggers

In ignoring the unfamiliar audience and using ‘Signin Lock’, the bloggers are excluding people who are not eligible to be a member of their blogs. These also provide strong evidence that the bloggers are forming a blogging community solely for members who are known to them and are able to participate in shared practices with shared experiences. As we will see in the later part of the analysis, the participation of the members in the blogs varies according to the content of the blog entries. The more relevant the entries are to the members, the higher engagement they will have in the online community of practice.

4.2

Performing desirable qualities in blogs Having seen how the blogs written by the adolescents in the current

study create nonymous environment with a group of known audience, we postulate on the basis of the literature review that the adolescents would construct aspects of identity which are most desirable to the intended audience and conform to the shared practice of the blogging community. Using the terms of Zhao et al. (1998), these desirable qualities illustrate the ‘hoped-for possible selves’ of the students. These qualities are not unique to a certain member of the blogging community. Instead, they are some common practices negotiated among the members over a certain period 74

time in the community. Four types of desirable qualities are observed in the present study: interpersonal related qualities; academic related qualities; personal related qualities and family related qualities.

4.2.1

Interpersonal related qualities When asked the reasons for them to blog, most of the participants

said that they started blogging because their friends had started and they followed to keep in touch with their friends after school online and share the fun of blogging. Interacting with others especially friends is always considered important in adolescent development (Selfhout et al., 2008). Blogs enable students to bring their everyday experiences which are shared by others from the offline world to the online world. Instead of repeating the facts of the experiences, the students would make full use of the resources available online to negotiate meanings which are meaningful to them.

4.2.1.1

‘My best friend gives reply to my msg very quickly’: Being

popular among friends Most of the blogs observed abound with information about the bloggers’ friends. Most students are making efforts to present a kind of group identity - being socially connected with others and popular among friends. If one wants to know a student’s friends, one just needs to browse the student’s blogs. Photos with the majority as group photos and verbal descriptions of activities related to friends are one of the shared practices commonly employed by members of the blogs to present the bloggers’ 75

different circles of friends (see Examples 5, 6 & 7).

Example 5

Many students like posting photos with their friends on their blogs. The photos tell the audience the circle of friends the students have inside and outside schools. The photos shown in Example 5 feature different events that the students share with their friends. The people in the photos may also be the visitors of the students’ blogs. By posting these photos which capture particular moments of the events, the students are actually highlighting how different groups of friends play different roles in their experiences. Some of them may be the ones to share their joy of getting some prizes; some may be the company for revision in study room; and some may be the partners for fun on an outing on the beach. There may be 76

other people involved in these experiences but the most important ones would be those selected by the students through the choice of photos. Another important thing to note is that these photos often demonstrate the use of a wide range of posture in expressing the close relationship with friends. The above photos taken with friends often project images of happy faces. Besides, people in the same photos showing uniform postures such as patting each other’s shoulder to show support, wearing class uniforms and waving palm-outwards V-sign together to show their strong faith in their friendship and in the examination ahead. These can convey messages that the blog owners have very good relationship with their friends. Sometimes the photos presented are not ‘real’ photos. Instead, using online photo editing technology, students can show images which manipulate the faces of their friends. The following are three photos in which a student’s friends are ‘inserted’ into other pictures. By ‘making fun’ of his friends, the student can show the audience who his close friends are because only close friends are chosen to be the target to be laughed at and the ‘models’ of the pictures.

Example 6

The above examples show that photos and digital photography can play an important role in the online identity work of the adolescents. The images help encapsulate the essence of peer relationships. Besides, the easy access to computer photo editing software and digital cameras in the modern world make the display and collection of relationships fun and more affordable. In discussing the use of friends’ photos in their blogs, students were asked if their friends would be unhappy to have their faces disclosed or edited online. Most of them said they knew their friends did not mind seeing their photos in others’ blogs and sometimes found the edited photos interesting. They were also confident that their friends would not use the photos posted online for other improper purposes. The use of photos in blogs can also illustrate a kind of mutual trust between the bloggers and the audience concerned. Moreover, the special photo editing effects have turned the friends of the blogger into celebrity-like people who are usually featured as the centre of attention with their faces enlarged and placed in the middle of the photos. In this way, the bloggers are hinting that these people are like celebrities who can always draw the attention of the bloggers. 78

In addition to using photos, some students may explicitly talk about friends who are important to them. In Example 7, the student lists the surnames of her best friends and decorates them with hearts to express the importance of these friends. The features are also compliments. Having their names publicly written on others’ blogs can be seen as a kind of recognition. This can make the friends happy and hence further strengthen the friendship through mutual recognition of the ‘best friends’ status. It is also interesting to see that the student has prepared a list of the features of her best friends. Some features such as ‘giving reply to mobile text messages, helping her to do things not enjoyed and being someone she is not jealous of’ are quite peculiar to the student. Such a list can provide insights into the student’s innermost perception of friends which is otherwise unknown to others.

Example 7 Kwok Poon Yim Cheung Ng Chan My best friend is 1. one who gives reply to my sms very quickly 2. one whom listen to my worries 3. one who is nice to me 4. one who helps me to do the things I don’t enjoy 5. one who always stay with me 6. one who supports me 7. one who I am not jealous of 8. one who understands me

郭潘嚴張伍陳我好朋友係.... 1. sd sms 比佢唔駛等佢回覆, , 2.將十級唔開心既野話佢知 3.好有我心=) 4.幫我做哂我唔鐘意做既野 5.成日痴埋一齊 6.係我精神支柱 7. 5 介意佢叻過我 8.勁有默契,,靠眼神就知大家想 79

點 9.肯聽我講勁長篇又冇組織既野 ^^ 10.proud of each other!

very well 9. one who is willing to listen to my messy speech 10. one who is proud of our friendship

Students can also use blogrings to organize their different groups of friends. The following is one example of the blogrings found in a student’s blogs. The blogrings show the memberships of the student in different communities such as school musical, a leadership training programme, a class at school, etc. This actually illustrates one important feature of the notion of community of practices – participation in multiple communities. By putting the blogrings together, the student’s blog becomes the nexus of the blogs owned by members of all the different communities that she belong to. The student creates opportunities for members of the different communities to interact with one another through visiting her blog. People who are not familiar with each other can establish a kind of relationship – friends of the blogger. They may not have seen each other face-to-face but they can engage in the same blogging activity such as giving comments to the same entry at the same time. Furthermore, the various memberships can serve as an important basis for our understanding of adolescents’ various kinds of identities constructed in various situations.

Example 8

 A member of a leadership training programme of a church  A member of the school musical  A member of a Christian group in a church  A student at a college  A Christian  A member of a church  People who know the blog user  Students of 4D / 5D (The bblogger’s class)

Other than blogrings, another common way to present their mass of friends is through the list of ‘subscriptions’ by which students subscribe to their friends’ blogs. By doing so, the students can express their preferences for blogs and present a list of ‘preferred’ friends on their blogs. Below are two lists of blog subscriptions in two students’ blogs. Some students may have a long list of friends like the left one as suggested by the scroll on the list, whereas some may only be interested in a few friends’ blogs like the right one with a short list.

Example 9

The students are also eager to invite their classmates to join the blogrings so that they can share their daily matters.

Example 10 3A 朋友仔

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