Social Media Research: Blogs

Social media encompasses a broad variety of websites, including social networking sites, blogs, wikis, photo sharing, social reading, and more.

Most of the sites on this page fall into more than one category, so it is important to keep that in mind when conducting research on social media.

Definition: A blog (short for "weblog") "is a Web site where an individual records his thoughts and opinions, comments from others and links to other Web resources. A blog can be a personal journal or an interactive forum. Most are public and searchable on the Internet" (Russell, 2003, p. 30).

Below are some popular platforms to create blogs.

• Tumblr "lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and vidoes from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be" (http://www.tumblr.com/about).
• About
• Press Information
• WordPress.com "lets you easily create your own blog and write about the things that interest you. It is a blogging community managed by the makers of the open source WordPress software" (http://en.support.wordpress.com/introduction/).
• Features
• News
• Introduction to WordPress.com
• Blogger is Google's free blogging platform and offers basic functionality for most users' blogging needs.
• Video Tutorial
• Blogger Tour