Has Blog Reader–Focused Research Evolved?

Abstract

For many years, researchers interested in the blogosphere have collectively acknowledged the lack of scholarly attention into the role of blog readers in the blogging activity. While many pioneering studies as well as new studies have highlighted the rising potential of this field, there has been no systematic examination of the growth or lack thereof of this field. As a result, this article reviews blog reader–focused research between 2008 and 2018 through a content analysis of blog reader–focused research articles obtained from seven databases: EBSCO’s Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, EBSCO’s Communication & Mass Media Complete, SAGE Journals, Elega’s Chronological Arrangement of Blog Readership Research, Wiley Online Library, and Taylor and Francis. We also identified the methods, theories, geospatial concentration, and journals that published these articles. Findings show that although at least one article was published each year with a peak of six in 2013 and 2015, blog reader–focused research has not really evolved given that concentration has tremendously decreased in the last 3 years (2016–2018). Regarding genres, we learnt that the majority of articles focused on political blogs, and most of the studies adopted quantitative research methods and survey as a data collection method. The results also show that blog reader–focused studies published between 2008 and 2018 used Uses and Gratification Theory more than other theories, and the majority of these articles focused on blogs in the United States. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, New Media &Society, and Computers in Human Behavior published more blog reader–focused research than other journals.