1. Maria Milonas Warsaw University, Poland
I come from Warsaw, the capital of Poland. I am a blogger since I used to be a classic blogger I became a metablogger – I observe, I analyse, I try to find rules.
I am on my way to write a doctorate about the social impact of blogs.

2. POLISH BLOGS ARE C-LOGS

3. Imagine… In Poland a blog is an interactive diary written online.
No J-logs, no K-logs, no RSS, …
Only posts and comments.
under-developed or different?
All important journals and magazines wrote about blogs wondering about whether it was normal or not to publish exhibitional information and emotions.
Our blogs are either diaries or eventually places of art – drawing blogs, photo blogs, or poetry blogs. We have blogs written by mothers, blogs describing the pregnancy, blogs of teachers, priests, written from the point of view of a dog, or thematically focused on one side of life.
But we have no J-logs, no K-logs. We do not use trackbacks, RSS XML or other acronyms which I don’t understand.

4. Some facts > 100,000 blogs Gierszewski’s survey (2002)
1000 bloggers chosen aleatory from
database, 411 answers
62% of blogs are written by women
The biggest over-representation of women is at school. Among working people and people with higher education the number of man increases significantly. And there is an over-representation of women in cities from 50,000 to 500,000 inhabitants which is not such significant in bigger cities.
Having a blog is trendy. It is cool and sometimes it is even needed in the school social life.

5. Sex

6. Some facts > 100,000 blogs Gierszewski’s survey (2002)
1000 bloggers chosen aleatory from
database, 411 answers
62% of blogs are written by women
75% of bloggers are 20 or less
The biggest over-representation of women is at school. Among working people and people with higher education the number of man increases significantly. And there is an over-representation of women in cities from 50,000 to 500,000 inhabitants which is not such significant in bigger cities.
Having a blog is trendy. It is cool and sometimes it is even needed in the school social life.

7. Age

8. Some facts > 100,000 blogs Gierszewski’s survey (2002)
1000 bloggers chosen aleatory from
database, 411 answers
62% of blogs are written by women
75% of bloggers are 20 or less
90% write from home
The biggest over-representation of women is at school. Among working people and people with higher education the number of man increases significantly. And there is an over-representation of women in cities from 50,000 to 500,000 inhabitants which is not such significant in bigger cities.
Having a blog is trendy. It is cool and sometimes it is even needed in the school social life.

9. Where do you use Internet?

10. A Polish blog A diary A conversation
An autotherapy Parzuchowski’s survey (2001)
Anonymous
Sincere
Emotional
There was a survey of another Polish student. More than a 1000 of respondents, unhappily not chosen by the researcher but those who wanted to participate. So it was not representative for the bloggers’ group. But one conclusion was important. A majority of bloggers feels better after having posted. There is an important group that declare that the aim of their writing is to understand themselves.
Conversation – sometimes our blogs become asynchronic chats (more than 1000 comments under a unsignificant post)

11. Why Polish young women write blogs?
Psychological answer
Technological answer
Sociological answer

12. Psychological answer ANALYSIS - I am alone
NEED - I want you to talk to me
TRANSACTION - I am ready to make myself nude
Would you please give me some attention?

13. Psychological answer 2 My blog is my castle where I decide
EGO - My blog is the virtual prolongation of myself
The need to control our lives. The need to control our realtionships. The possibility to promote oneself and exist in the virtual reality.

14. Technological answer It is easy to blog
When you start blogging you receive a webpage with some place on a server. You have this design and access to some precreated designs. You don’t have to know neither html nor other languages, you can simply post.
The time factor is really important. You don’t have to be online, which sometimes is in Poland a problem – we still have a majority of dialups whrough modems, where the price of being online is really high.
Finally we can treat the blog as a place.
We say: “see you on the blog” and we treat blogs as Oldenburgs’s Third Places that „exist on neutral ground and serve to level their guests to a condition of social equality. Within these places, conversation is the primary activity and the major vehicle for the display and appreciation of human personality and individuality.”

15. The complete acces to the html code.
A SMS to become blogger. A possibility to send SMS to a blogger without knowing his number. WAP blogging.
A post, some comments, on the left side a Visitors’ book and the archives, on the right side a pre-created place to links to other blogs or websites.
The complete acces to the html code.

16. Technological answer It is easy to blog A blog is asynchronic
A blog is a place. A blog is the Third Place
When you start blogging you receive a webpage with some place on a server. You have this design and access to some precreated designs. You don’t have to know neither html nor other languages, you can simply post.
The time factor is really important. You don’t have to be online, which sometimes is in Poland a problem – we still have a majority of dialups whrough modems, where the price of being online is really high.
Finally we can treat the blog as a place.
We say: “see you on the blog” and we treat blogs as Oldenburgs’s Third Places that „exist on neutral ground and serve to level their guests to a condition of social equality. Within these places, conversation is the primary activity and the major vehicle for the display and appreciation of human personality and individuality.”

17. Sociological answer There is no Net generation
There is deep individualism
We are a community of technology (SMS, s, weblogs)
A generation is a construct used to describe people of the same age. Actually, there is no community of age. Tha basic element of a generation is a common experience. In Poland, in Europe, we do not have this. Perhaps in a few years we could say that there was a generation of September 11th. Those whose growing up was touched by this tragedy.
But nowadays we do not have generations. A POlish sociologist said that participating in a generation is a privilege.
We are rather in a world of deep individualism. A world full of indiviuals, not only conscient of their specificity and uniqueness but also often focused on themselves.
Internet gives us a community. It is above all a community of technology. We communicate through Internet, through s, SMS, finally we communicate through weblogs.
Our community of technology become our reference group. Although there is no common age, no common culture, no common experiences. It is stronger than the non-existing generation.

18. C-log Communication Community A blog is a virtual place
where people can meet
not only with the content
but also with the person who stays behind the words.

19. Do you have personal contact with other bloggers?

20. What for? A virtual social life
A life in group, with all group dynamics, conflicts and leader rises.
Love between bloggers,
affairs,
and at least friendship.
Cheats (like a the diary of dead – a blog that ended by the would-be dead of a young boy, and now is the place of pilgrimages where young bloggers make their symbolic travel),
actions of charity (a blog of a young boy with leukaemia which serves to promote the need)
Dokument.blog.pl

21. C-log = Virtual social life
Group dynamics (leaders, conflicts)
Friendship
Love
Agressivity
Trust
Family blogs, kids blogs, parents blogs, gay blogs
Books, films (dokument.blog.pl)
Love between bloggers is real. I know even a real love affair, a blogger- man , his fiancee, a blogger-woman…
Friendship is growing up
We have a specific behaviour – we called it killikg, when a group of bloggers decide to kill a blogger. To kill a blogger is to force him to commit a blogsuicide – close the blog.
Trust – we had some charity actions. Some were real, others were not.
A lot of social groups are represented. We have gay and lesbian blogs, familly blogs, kids blogs… it is also the possibility to learn about people we have never meet, it can attentuate conflicts of generation. In a certain way it is educating to life in the society. In the Polish society, which is said to be intolerant, it has good consequences. It is a free access to other people minds.

22. Social evolution Mono-log (I say) Dia-log (I talk)
Community-log (We blogtalk)
=> map of
I say, my monolog is not directly adressed to readers.
I start to enter in interaction with other bloggers, I talk with them on my blog, on their blogs.
I participate in a community, where the aim is less to post (one way communication) but mostly to communicate (two-ways communication). Not the content but the process. And if you are not in, you are not always able to follow the conversation – it starts here, continues on another blog, comes back and often uses words known only in the group
We try to draw the map. There would be a double analysis – on the base of links and on the base of comments. But to do a map from 50,000 blogs we need really good computers.

23. While J-logs take the role of news, K-logs are encyclopedies,
C-logs are like a social event.
In Poland we like entertainment :)
Do you?

24. Maria Cywińska-Milonas
Dziękuję !
Maria Cywińska-Milonas