Cyber community

As a budding politician, Lee Benedict, of Martinez, found himself drawn to the political blog Peach Pundit and other "pockets of intelligence" on the Internet.

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Jim Blaylock/Staff

Lee Benedict, of Martinez, often reads political blogs from his home computer. A recent study found that, over time, people feel connected with blogs they frequent and their authors.

"It is dialogue, information, you know, just see what is going on out there," said Mr. Benedict, 40, who plans to run for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.

Financial blogs such as ShoeMoney.com are a constant in the daily routine of John Kane, 30, of Augusta, who works in Internet advertising and marketing.

"Generally I check them every day," he said. "Usually it's just in the rotation."

Why people read blogs was largely unstudied, however, until research from the University of California, Irvine, which was presented Wednesday at a conference on human-computer interaction in Florence, Italy. Using in-depth interviews with 15 heavy blog readers, the researchers were able to find some common motivations. For many, visiting and commenting on blogs is as rote as checking e-mail, said lead author Eric Baumer, a doctoral student in informatics.

"People just sort of do it," he said.

"It becomes an ingrained habit, where they tend to do it over and over again, not necessarily because they have a clear pull for that specific piece of content but because it is part of their routine," said Bill Tomlinson, an author of the study and an assistant professor of informatics at the school.

For many readers, a relationship develops between the reader and the blog. Someone might visit the blog at first for information, but over time develop a connection of sorts with the blog writer, Mr. Baumer said. One woman told them she went to a site that commented on pop culture and was at first turned off by posts from the blog writer about his cat, he said.

"But over time, as the reader got to know the blogger better, she sort of developed this relationship, to the point that the cat posts actually became somewhat endearing and helped create this sort of connection between them," Mr. Baumer said.

Some felt that connection even if they did nothing more than read the postings, Dr. Tomlinson said.

"That was an interesting realization, that (sense of) community emerges not necessarily by taking an action that anyone else can necessarily see but simply by the act of engaging with the content that was seen as participating in the community," he said.

It is that sense of connectedness, of community, that drives many readers to blogs, Dr. Tomlinson said. There is a push online toward a more participatory culture with things such as MySpace, he said.

"There is this real sense that people are participating in the creation of media, not just as sort of the primary authors but also as secondary authors, almost sort of supporting cast of these creative processes," Dr. Tomlinson said.

Future studies will aim at exploring those larger themes, Mr. Baumer said.

For Mr. Kane, that feeling of connectedness is getting to know someone even though it might never involve more than words typed into a Web site.

"Like you just know the person, where if you saw them on the street you could talk to them, even though you've never met them before," he said.

Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213 or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.