Li, Jamy, and Mark Chignell. "Birds of a Feather: How personality influences blog writing and reading." International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 68.9 (2010): 589-602. Web. 26 Sep 2010.
I chose this article as part of my continuing exploration of whether it is possible to impart a sense of self through written digital media and the ability of the audience to detect or connect to that digital self.
Li and Chignell conducted a small, controlled, and very interesting study. The authors identify a key attractor of blogs as their social nature. Blogs can assist in the formation of communities through subject, networking of links, comments from readers, etc. Li and Chignell’s study was designed to investigate how an author’s personality is expressed in blog text through an examination of linguistic characteristics, and how well readers could judge the writer’s personalities based solely on the blog entries.
Prior to the start of the experiment Li and Chignell administered a “Big Five” test to measure participants impressions of their own personalities. A controlled environment was created in which eight blog authors used identical equipment, were limited in their choice of blogging interface, and were given equal time to compose a minimum number of entries in two different blogging genres. A group of twelve participants then read the blog entries and were asked to rate interpersonal attraction, using a two-item measure, and the perceived personality of the blog author using the same scale that was delivered to both authors and readers in the preliminary questionnaire.
Blog readers agreed among themselves about the personalities of the bloggers and results suggested that blog text presents a consistently decodable version of an author’s personality. Interestingly, while readers agreed about an author’s personality, their construction did not always match the author’s self-reported personality. This suggests, to me, that the digital personas created by authors may have a web presence that is different than that intended and that, due to the permanence of digital records, the unintended personality may have considerable longevity.
Readers were better able to assess personality traits in journal blog entries as compared to commentary entries. The small nature of the sample suggests a need for further study. The study did offer support for the concept that readers are more attracted to writers who they think are similar to themselves in personality. This finding is consistent with earlier studies.
The controlled environment in which the study was conducted is one of its strengths and also one of its greatest weaknesses. By removing other elements of a “true” web experience the authors were able to make a stronger argument that their findings were the result of the blog texts rather than other environmental conditions. The same situation, however, makes it hard to translate the results into generalized statements about personality presentation and audience reception in a larger and messier reality. The length of entries used in this study was shorter than average web entries. Since readers were able to perceive personality traits here, it would be interesting to study whether the same holds true for even shorter messages, such as those on Twitter. More study is clearly necessary.
