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Blogging Now Good for You, Still Bad for Some
Several users have alerted us to a May Scientific American article that has been getting some attention more recently. Apparently, blogging is now good for you and, at least in this context, is the suggested reason for the explosion of blogging. This is quite the departure from some of the results we have seen in practice for more prolific bloggers.
No, it's because most bloggers have the mistaken idea that like-minded souls will seek out and read their stuff, think hard about it and then post an insightful response which re-inforces their self-worth. As we all know, most blogs are a write-only medium, if they have any benefit to the writer it's purely cathartic as it lets the writer vent a bit.
> ... have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences,
If that was the case, sales of diaries would be huge. They aren't. People don;'t write for themselves, they write for their (imagined) audience.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Sadly, the SciAm article is about a research study on expressive writing, not blogging. While the two may share some characteristics in common, they are not the same. How the writer (and SciAm) managed to wrangle this into an article about blogging is beyond me.
Worse, the study had a nearly 50% drop-out rate, meaning a good minority of people didn't have any interest in expressive writing. And with a small N, the results are hardly generalizable.
Shame on SciAm.
More here:
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/06/09/scientific-american-lets-stretch-research-to-make-it-sexy/