Diarying for an Audience

For todays blog I read "Shout into the wind, and it shouts back" by Lori Kendall. She starts out with an introduction to the study that she did with several people who use LiveJournal.
She separates the study into four parts:
1.) Private Journal v. Public Performance
2.) Efficiency v. Audience Management
3.) Control v. Connection
4.) Autonomy v. the Desire for Comments

Most of the people who participated in the study say that they still write like it is a private journal but they are a little more careful about identifying themselves in order to stay protected. They also know they are writing for an audience and make sure to keep their journal interesting.
Then there are some people like Mark who rarely post to their LiveJournal, except for important events, as when his son was born. He knew that it would be the most efficient way to send important information out to a mass group.

When it comes to control v. connection the participants like to know that they have control in what they are reading. Before Live Journal a lot of them were involved in Listserv and found it more difficult to weed out the people that they didn’t want to follow. With live journal one can pick and choose who they want to connect with much easier.

Lastly when people are receiving comments it generally means that they have said something that sparked an interest. The more comments that they receive the better the person feels because they feel as they have “performed” well.

I think LiveJounal is great for some people because they put their feelings out there and receive comments back. This is very similar to blogging, but with blogging you are able to completely make your blog private so that you know who is reading. I think that the LiveJournal is a little too public for my choice but if someone needs to get important information out to friends it is a very efficient way!

Kendall, Lori(2007). "Shout into the wind, and it shouts back." Identify and interactional tensions on LiveJournal. First Monday, 12. Retreived on August 21, 2008 from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_0/kendall/index/html