Blogging through conflict: Sojourners in the age of social media

Abstract

Social media enables the creation of online communities across physical boundaries. Blogs, or weblogs, enable bloggers to interact with a range of followers. We sought to conduct a qualitative study of the nature of the interactions that emerge in a blog community whose members are experiencing the impacts of ongoing conflict. We chose the Iraqi blogging community as a case study and focused on investigating the role of intercultural interactions in shaping people's experiences during conflict. We found that intercultural interactions aided people by providing support, finding commonality, building a knowledge base, and in giving advice on restoring infrastructure. The intercultural interactions provided alternative views of an event constructed from diverse cultural perspectives. We found that the intercultural interactions we observed suggest a degree of intercultural competency within the blogosphere. Copyright 2010 ACM.