Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teenage Blogs

Abstract

This study examines issues of online identity and language use among male and female teenagers who created and maintained weblogs, personal journals made publicly accessible on the World Wide Web. Online identity and language use were examined in terms of the disclosure of personal information, sexual identity, emotive features, and semantic themes. Male and female teenagers presented themselves similarly in their blogs, often revealing personal information such as their real names, ages, and locations. Males more so than females used emoticons, employed an active and resolute style of language, and were more likely to present themselves as gay. The results suggest that teenagers stay closer to reality in their online expressions of self than has previously been suggested, and that these explorations involve issues, such as learning about their sexuality, that commonly occur during the adolescent years.

Web Content Analysis: Expanding the Paradigm

“…For example, Herring and Paolillo (2006) analyzed the frequency of grammatical function words (such as noun determiners and personal pronouns) hypothesized to correspond to male and female writing styles, finding that the two styles better predicted whether the blog was a filter or personal journal than the gender of its author. Huffaker and Calvert (2005) analyzed language style in teenage blogs, using the DICTION analysis software to classify lexical items in relation to assertiveness and emotion. Similarly, Balog, Mishe, and de Rijke (2006) analyzed the occurrence of emotion words (such as "excited," "worried," and "sad") in a corpus of blog entries over time, relating spikes in emotional language use to world events.…”

Competing narratives, gender and threaded identity in cyberspace

“…Technological changes are transforming our society into a complex (virtual) reality (Huffaker andCalvert 2005, Herring 2007). Recent research concentrates on the possible effects on society of having most interpersonal interactions occur online, in cyberspace (Eshet 2004, Oblinger andOblinger 2005).…”

What Research Has to Say About Gender-Linked Differences in CMC and Does Elementary School Children’s E-mail Use Fit This Picture?

“…Huffaker and Calvert (2005), in contrast, report a high usage of emoticons. 63% of the teenagers in their study presented an emoticon at least once in their weblogs.…”