Laste kujutamine Eesti blogides
Date
2009
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
Representation of Children in Estonian Weblogs
Current bachelor’s thesis focuses on the subject of Estonian weblogs authored by
parents who write about their offsprings. The research paper surveys the roles and the
form the parents represent their children in on the internet and further explains why and
with which goal and obtained lessons they do so by interviewing the bloggers.
Access to theoretical materials on blogging is currently still limited as the phenomenon
itself is quite young compared to the rest of the mass media. Although a few books have
been published on the subject and many educational materials on new media also
include the topic of weblogs, there is virtually no research available on the
representation of children as subjects even in the context of “traditional media”.
To gather empirical data on the matter the current research combines the methods of
content analyses and in-depth interviews. The units necessary for the content analysis
were chosen from among ten recent posts of ten weblogs which mached the criteria of
necessary amount of words, frequency of posts and role of children as the protagonists
in the blog (i.e 100 posts all in all). To complete the findings of the analysis, I conducted
in-depth interviews with the authors of the ten blogs.
The most important findings included the fact that in their children’s blogs parents tend
to focus on more positive topics such as the development of their children. There are
also some blogs which convey longer discussions on the problematic issues of childraising.
While talking about the child, the parent is the story-teller, avoiding the use of
childish linguistic style.
The in-depth interviews revealed that the parents are well aware of the possibilities and
threats of the world-wide web. Possibilities include sharing information about their
child with friends and relatives both near and far and also leaving an easily accessible
diary for their child with detailed description of the period they grew up. The main
threat looming on the internet is the possibility that somebody might take a picture or
part of the text from somebody else’s weblog and use it for unproper purposes. To avoid
this, parents do not upload any pictures of their children naked nor write about too
personal or humiliating facts.
One of the most surprising findings was the fact that the parents who write weblogs
about their children are not keen followers of other blogs of the same kind and they are
also not dependent on reader comments nor the society’s overall attitude towards
bloggers. That also affirms that their personal need for expressing themselves is
nowhere close to the need of leaving their children with a true-to-life chronicle of their
childhood.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd