Via ABC News Online (“Blogging boosts your social life: research“), the findings of a recent research project out of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne has reported that:

“Blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face…”

I have to say I’m always wary of main stream media news sources that generalise the findings of a study into a one-line grab, completely omitting the subtle realities of the quantitative data set in the process.

While this article piqued my interest initially I was left feeling extremely unsatisfied with their shallow account of the research publication. I hope the journal article itself will provide more insight, because I can’t say I read anything that I didn’t already know.

I also find it extremely surprising that the study turned to MySpace for their sample population. This came in the form of an email sent personally to 600 users, requesting their participation and directing them to an online survey. This yielded 134 submissions – with 84 intending to blog and 50 not intending to blog.

As an online environment, MySpace is a network geared more towards casual and fairly shallow interaction via comments and messaging. I wouldn’t exactly call it a staging area for would-be bloggers.

Then again, having just tracked down the journal article itself I note the title is “Distress, Coping, and Blogging: Comparing New MySpace Users by Their Intention to Blog”.

While the content created on MySpace would still qualify as “blogging” in some cases, it should be noted that the caliper and nature of the content is drastically different on other blogging platforms. I would therefore advise against extrapolating the findings of this study in a general way across the entire population of bloggers, as you would likely discover the statistics are different.

Nonetheless, the fact that blogging research of any kind is starting to hit the radar of academia in Australia can only be a good thing.

References:

• “Blogging Is Good For Your Social Life: Study“, TechCrunch, 3 March 2008
• “Blogging boosts your social life: research“, ABC News Online, 3 March 2008
• “Distress, Coping, and Blogging: Comparing New Myspace Users by Their Intention to Blog”, CyberPsychology & Behavior. February 1, 2008, 11(1): 81-85.