From the Diary to the Blog: Using Blogs in Social Research

Blogs were the forerunner of the ‘social’ web or Web 2.0. This guide introduces blogs as multimedia ‘documents of life’ that offer opportunities for researchers interested in accessing first-person accounts of everyday life. Blogs are located within a tradition of personal document research, sketching the differences between diary and blog research. The guide outlines the key benefits of blog research and reviews key steps for collecting and analysing blog data. Drawing upon Hookway (2017) and Snee’s (2013) everyday morality and gap-year travel projects, the guide outlines key practical and methodological advice for doing blog research. The guide finishes with a discussion of the ethics of blog research highlighting the need for a contextual approach that acknowledges the complexity of privacy in digital spaces.