Indonesian women’s blog formats from Tanah Betawi to Serambi Mekah : Women blogger’s choices of technical features

Abstract

Drawing on the critiques of the active/passive dichotomy and using an ethnographic approach, this article looks at the forms of Indonesian women’s engagement in a convergent media world through blogging. We examine the technical, personalized authoring tools Indonesian women use in their blogging practices, and conclude that potential choices are not limitless as they hinge on authors’ contexts.

Keywords

Blogging convergence everyday life Indonesia internet technical features women

Introduction

This article presents an ethnographic study of the blog formats used by Indonesian women. It aligns with recent scholarly ideas on media use in everyday culture (Couldry, 2004; Hjorth, 2008; Takahashi, 2010). We consider a broad range of user engagements with the media, identifying the various forms which such engagements may take in Indonesian women blogging. Our definition of blog formats refers to the technical interface, which are the actual blogging software and its layout options. A number of scholars have mentioned the significance of blogging tools in the early days of blogs (Boyd, 2006; Herring et al., 2004). Not only do blogging tools make interactive communication possible, but they can turn a consumer into a producer – a prosumer in marketing parlance. Recent blogging tools offer flexible technical functionalities that users can adjust to taste. Although a majority of Indonesian female bloggers use free hosting services with standard technical affordances, many choose to pay for more diverse and flexible features that let them create a distinct ‘public face’.

The notion of ‘produser’, a term coined by Bruns (2006: 5), signals the increased complexity of audiences as both producers and consumers. This study looks at differences between women’s blogs in Java and elsewhere in Indonesia, based on Doueihi’s notion of anthology (2011: 31) and Herring et al.’s hybrid nature of blogs (2004: 11), proposing views of authorship and intentionality that hint at the possibility of personalized and autonomous models of authorship.

Furthermore, this study relates the varied faces of Indonesian women’s blogs to Donald Norman’s concept of perceived affordances (1988, 1998) to explain users’ freedom to decide what technical options to use. These decisions tend to be strongly intertwined with the local context, both cultural and geographical (Heskett, 2005; Hutchby, 2001; Norman, 1998).

Paradigm shifts

This section recalls the shifts in communication studies paradigms that have examined a wide range of relationships between media and users, from the subtle to the overt. Rather than using scholarly assumptions of a passive audience, this study builds on scholarly arguments that view the audience as active and thus able to seek out a media source that best fulfills its needs (Blumler and Katz, 1974: 15–17, 235). Additionally, this study also elaborates on the idea that audience engagement with the media is complex and should be examined in context (Couldry, 2004; Nightingale, 1996).

As media consumption is not isolated, but contextualized, the relationship between audience and media use cannot be universally predicted (Takahashi, 2010). Takahashi’s definition of communication describes a broad range of communicative behaviour, emphasizing the complexities of audience media engagement in the context of convergence in everyday life (Takahashi, 2010). That is to say media practices are not the same everywhere. On the contrary, they are highly contextualized and vary according to social and individual situations.

The arrival of the Internet underscores and extends the above paradigm shift in audience understanding. The technological affordances of the Internet allow for an interactive communicative experience through networks connected by satellite, radio, and fiber-optics links (Creeber and Martin, 2008: 14; Flew, 2008). We argue that the ‘active vs. passive audience’ dichotomy is entirely inappropriate for a medium such as blogging, which is all about producing and sharing digital content as well as establishing/maintaining networks. This study therefore follows scholarly arguments while focusing on what Indonesian women bloggers do with their medium of choice across a whole range of situations and contexts, including geography and ICT infrastructure.

The hybrid nature of a blog: Its format

Several scholars describe and discuss the notion of ‘blog’ in varying, often conflicting ways (Boyd, 2006; May, 2010; Puschmann, 2009). Numerous influential studies on blogs and blogging have focused on blog content (Blood, 2002; Boyd, 2006; Krishnamurthy, 2002). Scholars frequently use the term format to designate a blog’s intention: a ‘diary blog’, a ‘political blog’, an ‘educational blog’, etc. (Boyd, 2006; Puschmann, 2011).

In addition, they emphasize the role of technical features that enhance interactive communication and social networking: links, comments (Ali Hasan Adamic, etc.). Since 1999 blogging applications and their technical features have expanded greatly, creating a dynamic whole composed of posts, links, comments, images, search features, advertisements, calendars, archives and badges¹ (Herring et al., 2004, 2005). Regardless of the assumption that a blog can usually be classified based on its content, Herring et al. (2004, 2005) have introduced the notion of the ‘hybrid nature’ of blogs to describe an emerging, rich mix of technical characteristics.² Indeed, users can modify at will their blogs’s structural features (‘blog format’) based on their communication needs. Additionally, according to Boyd, ‘distinct affordance structures’ configure the environment in ways that shape participants’ engagement (2010: 39).

Puschman (quoted in Giltrow and Stein, 2009: 15) assimilates these technical features to devices that promote self-publishing functions. In other words, there is a link between ‘blogging software’ and ‘blog format’ that points to the way a blogger performs particular types of interactions and activities. Bloggers may use particular blogging applications to set up publicly accessible features such as columns, banners, badges, links, and images. These choices give impact to the blog format. However, several scholars indicated that the blog format remains a largely unexplored topic (Devitt, 2009; Giltrow and Stein, 2009).

It is important to note that the discussion of the flexible, hybrid nature of blogs in Herring et al.’s study does not pay attention to users’ engagements with their daily contexts. It also overlooks the idea that technical applications do not exist in a vacuum, but are interconnected with a user’ social and cultural context. To pursue this further, this study will build on scholarly views stating that blog formats are tied to users’ autonomy in authorship, which in turn is anchored in users’ cultural contexts (Doueihi, 2011). We draw on the work of Donald Norman (1988, 1999) on ‘perceived affordance’ to examine the claim that the hybrid nature of blogs hinges on social contexts and therefore opens up the possibility of limitations: the software offers a number of affordances – but not all of those may be actually used, depending on user context.

In 1988, Don Norman applied the concept of ‘perceived affordance’ to the design of everyday artifacts. According to Norman, an ‘affordance’ is the perceived and actual property which enables particular types of interactions and activities (Norman, 1988, 1993). In brief, drawing on Norman’s definition, blogging software can be categorized as a ‘perceived affordance’ helping a blogger design her blog’s public face. Norman offers two important insights. First a ‘thing’ is not limited to a physical object: it can be a technological instrument in a virtual environment. Second, the relationship between the user and the properties of the ‘thing’ does not hinge on human ability only, but most importantly on physical, logical, and cultural constraints (Norman, 1999, 1988).

Bearing in mind that blog authors choose technical features according to their communication needs (Doueihi, 2011), scholars argue that the flexibility of personalized authorship tends to be limited by skills, personal taste, and technological contexts (Benkler, 2006; Doueihi, 2011; Myers, 2010). Bandwidth (1984) and media characteristics (Walther and Parks, 2002) are other factors limiting the flexibility of personalized authorship. Both factors link to data transferring (Benkler, 2006). A multimedia feed such as video, sound, and pictures carries a lot more information than one based on numbers and words (Nardi, 2005; Ramirez and Burgoon, 2004). The hybrid nature of blog features strongly depends on technological infrastructure, which is in turn determined by social contexts (Galletta and Zhang, 2006; Kim, 2003). Concretely, this study will look at the differences between the magazine look of Java women’s blogs and the standard look of women’s blogs from outside Java, showing that the user’s daily context shapes a blog’s public dynamics.

The following sections will show that the Internet creates a paradoxical situation, one that is especially relevant for Indonesian women. On the one hand, people are becoming more familiar with the existence of the Internet and believe social networks can easily be created via the Internet. On the other hand, there is an infrastructure gap between, for instance, urban and rural areas. This study will show that due to this paradox women need to adapt their engagement with blogging.

Methodology

This study stems from ethnographic research on blogging based on participant observation, informal, and formal interviews (between October 2009 and November 2012). Most of the interviews took place in face-to-face circumstances in six different areas (Bali, Makassar, Aceh, Jakarta, Jogjakarta, and Semarang). In addition, discussions were continued through email and instant messaging. During 4 years of observation and informal interviews the author was a formal member of five blogger communities (Batam Blogger Community, Bali Blogger Community, Aceh Blogger Community, Loenpia Semarang, and Anging Mammiri), and a lurker in two more (Komunitas Blogger Bengawan and Wong Kito). This insider’s position afforded greater access to bloggers and data about blogging.

A number of women bloggers using IssueCrawler were selected in an effort to map the interconnections between individual blogs in sections of the blogosphere (Bruns, 2007). From this map, a list of Indonesian women’s blogs was drawn. Only those women’s blogs were included that showed in- and out-links in relation to that list. Interviews took place and were recorded in formal sessions or in more natural settings. Additionally, hundreds of informal discussions were held with a diverse range of bloggers: men, women, early adopters and newcomers, founders, administrators, people who blog professionally and others who blog in their spare time.

The formats of Indonesian women’s blogs

Four significant differences in the formal features of blogs were found across the study area: hosting methods, the integration of cross-social media platforms, connectivity issues, including geographical and political constraints, and finally blog awards, understood as a means of bringing the community closer. Each of these differences will be discussed in turn.

Hosting methods and why they matter

As an illustration, Table 1 lists differences between fee-based and free blog hosting services.

Table 1.

Hosting methods.

Free hosting	Fee-based hosting
Limited features	Unlimited features (cost-dependent)
Limited storage	Unlimited storage (cost-dependent)
Fixed domain names	Unique domain names
Default template	Flexible, rich template

A majority of Java female bloggers choose fee-based hosting as it makes for dynamic looking layouts. The latter afford more opportunities to create distinctive layouts, as free blog platforms only allow a standard look.

Let us take Yogyakarta blogger Tikabanget (32, married) as an example. Attracted by its unlimited features, as compared to free hosting services, she subscribes to a fee-based platform (personal interview, 6 August 2012). Her blog’s home page shows a dynamic horizontal sliding panel in the centre of the page, which is also known as a continuous carousel (Figure 1). There are three columns under the continuous carousel where she puts the recent posts archive, a list of recent comments, and recent tweets from her Twitter account.

Figure 1.

Tikabanget’s blog: a fashionable design.

Another Jakarta female blogger, Gudangku (37, single) gives similar reasons for her choice of fee-based hosting. Because she lacks technical skills, she had a web design service modify her blog’s features (personal interview, 5 August 2012). Gudangku’s home page displays flexible columns (Figure 2). The upper part of the page has two columns, and the bottom part has four. The most recent post sits in the middle. The sidebar to the right lists recent posts. The four-column section is a list of blog categories. The blog includes three pages: the home page (My Place, ‘Rumahnya’), the profile page (About Me, ‘Tentangnya’,) and a third page (Photo Archive, ‘Gudang Foto’) that links to another blog, focusing on photography.

Figure 2.

Gudangku’s blog: a dynamic design.

Like Gudangku and Tikabanget, a majority of Java bloggers in our sample also chose paid-hosting blogs.³ These women have similar reasons for this choice: ‘having a prestigious and fashionable blog’ appears to be their main motive. Considering the importance of a blog’s public face, this study draws on Papacharissi’s view that web authors use a variety of features to promote themselves (2002: 654).

A single woman from Semarang who also works as a web designer, Neng-Ocha supports this argument by stressing the importance for a blogger to have a unique domain name that acts as a brand name, so that readers can easily remember it (personal interview, 24 November 2009). Of course, the choice of fee-based hosting is not just a tactical step in securing an outstanding or attractive blog format: it also helps women build a prestigious, unique profile in the blogosphere. Such tactical moves underscore a need to achieve exclusivity and integrity. In addition, Jakarta blogger CeritaEka (32, married) emphasizes that having the ‘dotcom’⁴ suffix in her URL improves search engine indexing, broadening her readership and network (personal interview, 5 and 8 September 2012).

CeritaEka’s statement supports Papacharissi’s (2002) view that interactivity and vividness of a homepage attract visitors. More importantly, in the case of Indonesian women, paying for hosting is indicative of a dedication to enhancing their exposure and public image – an investment towards a better chance of ‘being networked’. In line with CeritaEka, Jakarta blogger Venus-to-Mars gives her rationale for choosing a fee-based blog platform:

In fact, everyone acknowledges that blogging has great power. At least, for me personally, blogging set the stage for all my current accomplishments. New knowledge, new jobs, and almost every good thing that came to me stemmed from blogging. (personal interview, 4 September 2012)

Venus-to-Mars and CeritaEka show us that those Indonesian female bloggers who choose to pay for their hosting needs do not do so based on style considerations, but out of a need to make the most of blogging. Not only does this increase readership, but it creates revenue through paid advertising on their sites. Bloggers such as NonaDita and Tikabanget claim that making money through online advertising is not their major motive. For instance Tikabanget rejected several offers because they did not feel right (personal interview, 6 August 2012). Likewise, NonaDita insists that her blog is a place for knowledge sharing. She does not earn money from it. (personal interview, 6 October 2012).

To some extent, these findings confirm Papacharissi’s (2002) conclusion that blog features can be understood as authors’ personal markers to attract visitors. Hence, these bloggers’ decision to have their own, unique URL reflects their awareness that paying for a domain is important to make their blog noticeable by web search engines, which in turn plays an important role in widening opportunities and exposure.

By way of comparison, this is what a Kalimantan female blogger had to say:

Most of my female friends have a negative opinion of blogging, as they cannot earn money from this activity. For me blogging offers more advantages than money. (personal interview with Honeylizious, 19 March 2012)

However, fee-based hosting has another advantage: security. Sofyan, a web designer, explains that free blog services give bloggers no control over content and thus provide no data back-up, unlike fee-based services. (personal interview, 19 January 2009).

In contrast to most Java bloggers in our study, who favour paid hosting as a measure of their dedication, a majority of bloggers from the other islands are content with free hosting services, particularly in Aceh, Kalimantan, and Palembang. Uninterested in a slick blog format, these women prefer free platforms that offer standard, static features. A free blog is characterized by static columns. The bigger column displays the author’s posts, with the most recent on top. The smaller column includes a blogroll (some bloggers separate female from male authored blogs), a calendar, various lists (old posts, recent comments, most popular posts, post categories), a ‘shout box’, a box listing the blog’s followers (most display the latter’s avatars), cross platform media follower buttons, a list of recent tweets, a visitor statistics count box, a box of visitor live reports, tickers, and badges.

Another example: FindingNova sees no reason to give up her free blog as she joins the free blogspot.com platform. This solution supports her blogging activities, so she has no need to switch to a fee-based service (personal interview on 5 August 2012). FindingNova’s choice strongly relates to Paparachissi’s view that the choice of a blogging client and a blog format are part of a user’s self-promotion. FindingNova’s choice is part of her performance as a member of a particular community.

Another Aceh blogger, IhanSunrise favours personalized authorship on a simple-looking blog:

I dislike complicated features. For my blog I prefer clean and simple features that give a ‘tidy’ impression to my visitors. I have no need for complex features. (personal interview, 5 December 2009)

Palembang blogger ItikKecil, who uses a free platform, offers another angle: she refers to her blog’s ‘safety’ rather than appearance, which supports Sofyan’s view that fee-based hosting is safer than free hosting:

Actually, I’ve already bought a domain: itikkecil.com. I still do not have an urgent reason to move my Wordpress.com content to the new host. Perhaps, when I feel Wordpress is unsafe and requires too much attention, I will move to my new domain. (personal interview, 5 August 2012)

Infrastructure impacts

Needless to say, here external factors are most important, and the privileges offered by unique URLs become less significant. Kalimantan blogger Honeylizious complains about the Province’s poor wireless infrastructure, which prevents bloggers from building interactive and stylish blogs (personal interview, 20 March 2012). Clearly, broadband availability and reliability are not evenly distributed across Indonesia. In Kalimantan Internet connections do not support the sophisticated blogging found in Java. Although women outside Java do author blogs, poor Internet infrastructure prevents them from using colourful graphics, video content, and multiple pages. Honeylizious confirms the impact of infrastructure in that for some Indonesian bloggers fee-based hosting is not an option as it would simply not work. In Indonesia dial-up connections through a PT Telkom land line (PTT is the market leader in telecommunications) remain the norm for rural/remote sites and small cities. By way of information, in 2010 there were only 15.8 telephone lines per 100 people across Indonesia (BMI, 2012).

Like many others in provincial areas, Siti only subscribes to Speedy – a PT TELKOM Internet connection solution – as her Internet provider only offers dial-up connections, which do not guarantee continuous service:

My blog is very simple. (Wireless) Internet connection in Pidie is not good. Oh well, I have already signed up for an Internet connection with Speedy. (personal interview, 4 December 2009)

Another blogger who joined our conversation laughed and said: ‘Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Speedy sucks. Sometimes it goes damn slow, and other times it just stops working without notice’ (personal interview with Maimoon, 4 December 2002).

In fact even those who have fixed land line telephone connections face bandwidth problems and the high price of a dial-up Internet connection. Internet users without a fixed dial-up connection are also struggling with their mobile network as the quality is as bad as that of a fixed dial-up connection:

One should not forget that many rural areas are still untouched by Internet connections. How could one wish for an Internet connection, in fact many areas are not yet covered by mobile network operators. We must build antennas just to get a mobile signal. Provincial wireless connection is intolerably bad. How could we author a fully featured blog? (personal interview with Honeylizious, 20 March 2012)

The Government is considering several solutions to remedy Internet connection problems across Indonesia, such as wireless connections and Internet cafés. Unfortunately, both solutions are facing problems owing to Indonesia’s new decentralization policy based on laws no. 22/1999 and no. 25/1999. Under these laws the Government handed over a number of domestic affairs to the local authorities. With respect to telecommunication regulations, several provincial governments involve network providers, service providers, and telecommunication network companies (Purwati, 2000). Local governments see in the telecommunications business an opportunity to increase income by levying additional taxes and user charges. On account of these regulations private communication companies cannot develop a local wireless Internet infrastructure, which is why people in rural areas are often deprived of sufficiently cheap Internet connections.

In what follows, this study provides evidence of the compatibility (or lack thereof) of connections between users. Relevant in this respect is Hjorth’s question (2006): ‘But beyond the hype of industry rhetoric and users being ‘prosumers’ (consumers plus producers) what is the reality for users?’ In the case of Indonesia we see that the infrastructure falls short in terms of bandwidth, availability, and connectivity. This is why, rather than Papacharissi (2002) and Herring et al. (2004), who only look at public image building on a blog using advanced blogging software, we could rather follow Goggin (2008) and Hjorth (2006), who argue that it all boils down to user reality – i.e., availability, connections, and infrastructure. Several external factors prevent Indonesian women bloggers from taking advantage of the hybrid nature of blogs as they have limited options to modify blog features.

Replacing the blogroll: Cross-social media platform integration

Early studies on blogging only focused on links and contents. In the early days of blogging, besides indicating social acknowledgement, links were the only sign of connectivity between bloggers (Blood, 2000, 2004). However, in the late 1990s, two companies – www.blogger.com and www.pitas.com – introduced two innovations: commenting and blogroll features, which offered higher interactivity functions.

The more recent blogging clients allow users to set up interactive blog formats that let readers add content through such features as comments, blogrolls, pingbacks, trackbacks, and social media cross-platforms buttons. For this reason, scholars agree that innovation in blogging software has been increasing the interactive potential of the medium (Ali-Hasan and Adamic, 2007; Koop and Jansen, 2009).

However, as blogging clients become more sophisticated the blogroll – a sidebar displaying links to the author’s favoured fellow bloggers’ sites and meant to boost traffic to the blog – seems to have lost in popularity among our Java bloggers. One blogger thought this feature ‘so last decade’ (personal interview with Venus-to-Mars, 4 September 2012). Venus-to-Mars replaced her blogroll with the Google Reader feature. Google Reader streamlines subscribed blog content and aggregates the data in one specific location so that blog subscribers can consume updated information whenever they are ready for it. Using a blogroll, authors must constantly check updates manually, while Google Reader automatically updates the author’s favourite links. Another issue is the unwritten rule that you have to reciprocate whenever a blogger links to your blog: this may prevent the user from shaping her blog as she sees fit. Of course, as some blogs become more popular and more links are forged, other blogs fall out of favour and with them the blogroll reciprocity rule. So to avoid this problem, one blogger chose not to activate the blogroll function, freeing herself from the potential conflicts that may be generated by this particular aspect of blogging etiquette (personal interview with TikaBanget, 6 August 2012). Another blogger indicated that the quid-pro-quo rule could be bad for her blog’s appearance: ‘I would receive complaints from visitors who would not find their blogs on my blogroll. I know it and it would irritate me’ (personal interview with CeritaEka, 5 September 2012).

Like TikaBanget and Venus-to-Mars, CeritaEka decided to replace her blogroll with other features. The more recent blogging clients offer various features that cover the blogroll’s function in a more advanced fashion. Features such as social media buttons, the RSS button, or Google Reader not only reflect an blogger’s self-awareness as networked content producer (Ali-Hasan and Adamic, 2007; Marlow, 2004), but they illustrate Norman’s concept of perceived affordances (1988, 1998). Our bloggers exercise their discretion over technical options by replacing the blogroll function with other features that serve her goals. Thus for them a blogroll represents a readership network. We may conclude that these days a blogroll does not necessarily encourage social bonds or foster close relationships (Efimova and de Moor, 2005). Indeed, for Adamic and Ali-Hasan, a blogroll is more a matter of ‘idolatry’ of ‘A-List bloggers’, pointing to uneven power relationships within the blogosphere.

Another reason to de-activate the blogroll feature is the Internet connection issue. Jakarta blogger CeritaEka makes sure the formal features of her blog facilitate smooth communication. She deactivated her blogroll out of concern for her readers, especially those without a high-speed connection:

When the blogroll is active, it displays links on your blog, which causes it to load more slowly. Potential readers may get frustrated and leave. (personal interview, September 2012)

In light of the above, some bloggers choose to activate other features which redirect to other social media platforms to increase connectivity. The most common way to bypass blogroll problems is to provide links to Twitter and Facebook, two cross-platform social media. A blogger’s home page typically displays sharing buttons to Twitter and Facebook accounts, the Facebook’s ‘like’ button, the Twitter and Facebook ‘follower’ buttons, and Twitter’s real time news feed.

This choice by our women bloggers to use such social media features does two things: it clarifies the notion of the hybrid nature of blogs, and it asserts their practical control over connectivity and their will to establish relationships as bloggers while creating favourable conditions for readers. In other words they take advantage of their medium of choice’s hybrid nature to increase their online visibility. Indeed, blogging does not just involve writing, reading, and commenting in a limited sense. It opens up the potential for all sorts of social connections online:

My Twitter and Facebook buttons signify my presence in online world, in a sense. They tell my readers they can ‘meet’ me and my writings on my blog. But, I also have Facebook and Twitter accounts. You can interact with me on Twitter and Facebook. You also can chat with me there. Why? I know my friends are there, so I am too. When they discuss an interesting topic, I am there – and I may join in the conversation. (personal interview with TikaBanget, 5 August 2012)

Clearly, innovations in web authoring tools such as social media platform buttons play an important role in Indonesian women’s blogging. Besides authoring a blog, it lets them ‘access, publish and propagate issues, opinions and experiences from their own perspectives’ (Radloff, 2005: 85). By activating Twitter and Facebook buttons on their blogs, our Java bloggers facilitate complex interconnections using cross-platforms tools.⁵ What happens on Twitter and Facebook often inspires blog posts, written up into more detailed opinion pieces, discussions, or jokes. Blog posts may also be redirected towards Facebook and Twitter, which may spark a new discussion there. This illustrates the way people make use of newer technologies to interact in ever more complex ways. Taking this point further, interaction in ‘cross-platform’ media means ‘being visible’ in public. Using such technical features both strengthens a blogger’s engagement with blogging and increases her online connectivity, deepening an involvement with social networking that began through blogging. We might say that a blog’s technical features often make for an enlarged social network.

For Java women bloggers, recent web authoring tools such as social media cross-platform buttons to be pasted on home pages are more effective than the blogroll feature in increasing readership and developing social bonds. These new tools let them increase their visibility, and if possible, their popularity.

Blog awards: Bringing the online community closer

In contrast with Java bloggers who strengthen their social bonds and connectivity through social media features, Aceh bloggers tend to socialize with visitors by bestowing awards. Such awards take the form of badges or images and are a distinctive formal feature of blogs from Aceh. The ‘blog awards’ complement other features such as links and comments. A blogger will present an award to a peer by writing a post that describes her motivations. The blog award is a public, interactive activity: bloggers nominate other bloggers and announce the awards in their blog posts (see Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Awards on FindingNova’s blog (Aceh).

A blog award is a means for a blogger to articulate a relationship or friendship with another blogger. Our findings show that blog awards are a way for a reader to publicly praise and appraise a favourite blog.

While nobody knows where the blog award idea originated from, it does help Aceh bloggers create a more close-knit social network. Previous research has shown a common thread in that the nature of a social network and community can be identified through links and comments. The blog award strengthens social bonds within a blog construed as a social network. Moreover, it rewards loyal readers and acknowledges a blogger’s dedication. In other words, not only do awards sustain readership, they also enlarge the circle of friends in the blogosphere. So they can be said to be a tool to hold conversations on blogs that ‘without links and trackbacks posts across weblogs lose their “physical” connection even when they are connected to each other logically’ (Efimova and de Moor, 2005: para 65).

Conclusion

This study hinges on Herring et al.’s (2004) theoretical discussion of the hybrid nature of blogs. Herring et al. (2004) assert that, shaped by multimodal elements, blogs offer a wide range of technical features that meet the communicative needs of users. However, regardless of this hybrid nature, a blog’s technical features are not limitless: they are based on its author’s context and even values (Norman, 1988). This study of the Indonesian female blogosphere shows that women bloggers across seven different communities display different public faces. For instance, most Java bloggers in our sample favour a ‘magazine look’ and thus pay for blog hosting. Conversely, in other regions a majority of bloggers are content with the basic nature of free blog platforms.

We have seen that these distinctions are mostly not influenced by economic factors. Instead, due to the lack of an adequate Internet infrastructure, presenting a full featured ‘public face’ can be complicated. This indicates that technical blog features are anchored contextually. We have found striking differences in ‘public face’ between blogs from Java and blogs from outer Java. These differences are congruent with hosting type and choice of technical features, the latter begin a factor of the quality of the Internet infrastructure. Java blog formats have an ‘I blog therefore I am’ feel owing to the blogging clients used as well as the bloggers’ motivations and expectations. In other words, the technical options used are means to an end. These choices do not always take the best possible advantage of the hybrid nature of blogs. Instead, aware of the infrastructure gap in Indonesia, these Java women adjust blog format to maximise readership/reader contributions. This highlights a relationship between authority and engagement, with a focus on choice of blog format as a means to change roles between readers and authors (Doueihi, 2011), opening up opportunities to produce and consume for all. Our Java bloggers shape their blog’s public face and make it a suitable place for interaction.

However, such choices are made possible by a well-established infrastructure, which does not fit with other women’s reality. Indeed, outer Java bloggers have an ‘old school’ approach in their choices of blog format – one that is predetermined by the poor infrastructure they must contend with. Distanced from large metropolitan centres and services, they are not only disadvantaged by inadequate infrastructure but also miss out on many potential activities.

This study of women’s blogs from different Indonesian regions evidences strong engagement between women, media, and daily context. Consistent with Couldry’s idea that media uses are anchored in cultural practices (Couldry, 2004), this research shows that applying universal assumptions about technology is likely to lead one astray, as in the case of Indonesian women bloggers, whose blog formats are shaped by the country’s economy, geography, and politics.

Figure 4.

An award on Mutiabachnar’s blog (Aceh).

Footnotes

Funding

My PhD research, this study is part of, was funded by an Indonesian government scholarship (2009–2012) and an international postgraduate tuition award from the University of Wollongong (2012–2013).

Notes

References

Ali-Hasan N and Adamic L (2007) Expressing social relationships on the blog through links and comments. International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM).

Benkler

(2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Bird

(2003) The Audience in Everyday Life: Living in a Media World, New York: Routledge.

Blood R (2000) Weblogs: A History and Perspective. Available at: http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html (accessed 16 May 2011).

Blood

(2002) The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, Cambridge: Perseus Books Group.

Blood

(2004) How blogging software reshapes the online community. Communication of the ACM 47: 53–55.

Blood R (December 2004) Hammer, nail: How blogging software reshaped the online community. In: Blood R Rebbeca's Pocket. Available at: http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/blog_software.html.

Blumler

Katz

(1974) The Uses of Mass Communications: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research, Beverly Hills: SAGE.

BMI (2012) Indonesia Telecommunication Reports, London: Business Monitor International.

10.

Boyd D (2006) A blogger’s blog: Exploring the definition of a medium. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, 6. Available at: http://reconstruction.eserver.org/064/boyd.shtml.

11.

Boyd

(2010) Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In: Papacharissi

(ed) Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites.

12.

Bruns

(2006) Introduction. In: Bruns

Jacobs

(eds) Uses of Blogs, New York: Peter Lang.

13.

Bruns A (2007) Methodologies for mapping the political blogosphere: An exploration using the IssueCrawler research tool. First Monday [Online].

14.

Couldry

(2004) Theorising media as practice. Social Semiotics 14: 115–132.

15.

Creeber G and Martin R (2008) Digital Culture Understanding New Media. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill International (UK) Ltd. Available at: http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do? ptiID=420772.

16.

Daft

Lengel

(1984) Information richness: A new approach to managerial behaviour and organizational design. Research in Organizational Behaviour 6: 191–233.

17.

Devitt AJ (2009) Re-fusing form in genre study. In: Giltrow J and Stein D (eds) Genres in the Internet. Issues in the Theory of Genre. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

18.

Doueihi

(2011) Digital Cultures, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

19.

Efimova L and De Moor A (2005) Beyond personal web publishing: An exploratory study of conversational blogging practices. In: Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-38), 3–6 January, IEEE Computer Society Press.

20.

Flew

(2008) New Media: An Introduction, South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

21.

Galletta

Zhang

(2006) Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Applications, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe Incorporated.

22.

Gaver

(1991) Technology affordances. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Reaching Through Technology, New Orleans: ACM.

23.

Giltrow J and Stein D (2009) Genres in the Internet. Issues in the theory of genre. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Available at: http://www.myilibrary.com? id=239547.

24.

Goggin

(2008) The models and politics of mobile media. The Fibreculture Journal, 082.

25.

Herring

Scheidt

Wright

(2005) Weblogs as a bridging genre. Information Technology & People 18: 142–171.

26.

Herring

(2010) Web content analysis: Expanding the paradigm. In: Hunsinger

Allen

Klastrup

(eds) The International Handbook of Internet Research, Berlin: Springer Verlag.

27.

Herring

Scheidt

Bonus

(2004) Bridging the gap: A genre analysis of Weblogs. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences Vol. 11, Big Island, USA: IEEE Computer Society, pp. 111.

28.

Heskett

(2005) Design: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

29.

Hjorth L (2006) Being mobile: In between the real and the reel. Asia Culture Forum. Kwangju City, Korea.

30.

Hjorth L (2008) Mobile Phone Culture in the Asia Pacific: The Art of Being Mobile (Asia's Transformations). Hoboken: Routledge.

31.

Hutchby I (2001) Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology 35: 441--456.

32.

Kim J (2003) Interpersonal Interaction in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC): Exploratory Qualitative Research based on Critical Review of the Existing Theories. The Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association. San Diego, CA.

33.

Koop R and Jansen HJ (2009) Political blogs and blogrolls in Canada: Forums for democratic deliberation? Social Science Computer Review. Epub ahead of print 24 February 2009. DOI: 10.1177/0894439308326297.

34.

Krishnamurthy S (2002) The multidimensionality of blog conversations: The virtual enactment of September 11. Internet Research 3.0.

35.

Marlow C (2004) Audience, structure and authority in the weblog community. In: International Communication Association, 2004.

36.

May J (2010) The History of Web Design Blogs. www.PelFusion.com. Available at: http://pelfusion.com/design/the-history-of-web-design-blogs/ (accessed 8 March 2012).

37.

Myers

(2010) The Discourse of Blogs and Wikis, London: Continuum.

38.

Nardi B (2005) Beyond bandwidth: Dimensions of connection in interpersonal communication. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 14: 91–130.

39.

Nielsen Research (2011) Mobile phone penetration in Indonesia triples in five years. New York: Nielsen.

40.

Nightingale V (1996) Studying Audiences: The Shock of the Real. Oxon, UK: Taylor & Francis Group.

41.

Norman

(1993) Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine, New York: Addison Wesley Publishing Company.

42.

Norman

(1988) The Psychology of Everyday Things, New York: Basic Books.

43.

Norman

(1998) The Design of Everyday Things, London: MIT.

44.

Norman

(1999) Affordance, conventions, and design. Interactions 6: 38–43.

45.

O’Reilly T (2005) What is web 2.0: design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. www.oreilly.com. Available at:http://facweb.cti.depaul.edu/jnowotarski/se425/What%20Is%20Web%202%20point%200.pdf (accessed 15 August 2011).

46.

Papacharissi

(2002) The presentation of self in virtual life: Characteristics of personal home page. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 79: 643–660.

47.

Purwati

(2000) UU Otonomi daerah dan regulasi telekomunikasi.

48.

Puschmann

(2009) Lies at Wal-Mart. In: Giltrow

Stein

(eds) Genres in the Internet: Issues in the Theory of Genre [electronic resource], Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

49.

Puschmann

(2011) Blogging. In: Herring

Stein

Virtanen

(eds) Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication, Germany: De Gruyter.

50.

Ramirez

Burgoon

(2004) The effect of interactivity on initial interactions: The influence of information valence and modality and information richness on computermediated interaction. Communication Monographs 71: 442–447.

51.

Takahashi

(2010) Audience Studies: A Japanese Perspective, New York/London: Routledge.

52.

Walther

Parks

(2002) Cues filtered out, cues filtered in: Computer-mediated communication and relationships. In: Knapp

Daly

(eds) Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.