ABSTRACT
In the past several years, blogs—frequently modified webpages containing dated entries listed in reverse chronological sequence—have gone from relative obscurity to immense popularity. Blogs are popular in part because they enable easy inexpensive self-publication of content for a potentially vast audience on the world wide web, and because they are more flexible and interactive than previous publication formats, print or digital (Herring, Scheidt, Bonus & Wright, 2005). The rapid efflorescence of the blogosphere—the universe of available blogs—has also been fertilized by a series of external events over the past few years that have inspired blogging activity: terrorist acts, war, political campaigns and natural disasters. Blogging about these events has attracted the attention of the mainstream news media, further contributing to the popularization and adoption of this new mode of computer-mediated communication.
