Blogging in a region of conflict: supporting transition to recovery

Authors:
Ban Al-Ani;Gloria Mark;Bryan Semaan
Affiliations:
University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA;University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Year:
2010

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Abstract

The blogosphere is changing how people experience war and conflict. We conducted an analysis of 125 blogs written by Iraqi citizens experiencing extreme disruption in their country. We used Hoffman's [8] stages of recovery model to understand how blogs support people in a region where conflict is occurring. We found that blogs create a safe virtual environment where people could interact, free of the violence in the physical environment and of the strict social norms of their changing society in wartime. Second, blogs enable a large network of global support through their interactive and personal nature. Third, blogs enable people experiencing a conflict to engage in dialogue with people outside their borders to discuss their situation. We discuss how blogs enable people to collaboratively interpret conflict through communities of interest and discussion with those who comment. We discuss how technology can better support blog use in a global environment.