Blog 9

One of the first things I did when we got signed up for the blog was go down the list, click on each users name, and see who posted pictures of themselves. And I did it again just now. Three women did (including Dr. Markman). Two users chose to post satirical/comical pictures and the others no picture or set their profile to private. And while the Huffaker & Calvert research show no difference in males and females showing personaly identifiable info, I find it interesting that only females in our group chose to show pics of themselves. Is that because we are a closed group? Just like in high school, you want to find out the attractive men/women in the class, who the class clown is going to be, who the slackers are, etc., etc.

It was also interesting, and to me unexpected, that Huffaker & Calvert's research, while their hypotheses seemed logical, they were for the most part proved wrong. The fact that teen agers used weblogs as an extension of real life was also suprising, but after thinking about it also seems logical. Most people wouldn't want to hide behind an online personae but would want to embrace its ability to extend their social life as teens tend to look for ways to interact with as many people as possible.