Can Blogs Empower Women? Designing Agency-Enhancing and Community-Building Interfaces

摘要

The much-touted empowerment potential of blogs is empirically examined in this study through an online survey of female bloggers (N = 340). Our findings indicate that by affording users either a strong sense of community, or a deep sense of agency, or both, blogging is indeed psychologically empowering to those undertaking it. This is part of an ongoing series of investigations into the empowerment potential of Web 2.0 interfaces for marginalized groups in society. Implications for design are discussed.