Blogs are a popular genre with privacy issues related to self-disclosure. Although
prominent blogs are often essentially online newspapers or news filter sites, most
blogs are online personal diaries (Herring et al. 2004), with the typical subject being
“My life” and the main purpose being “to document [] personal experiences and
share them with others” (McCullagh 2008, p. 9; see also Nardi et al. 2004). The
diary-like nature of most blogs means that they tend to contain personal information
about the author. Blogs are therefore an odd phenomenon in that they are typically
used to publically discuss personal matters that would not be widely broadcast in
other ways and might also be considered to be private (McCullagh 2008). More
generally, the diary format may allow readers to develop an impression of the
identity of the author that is more than just the sum of the individual facts.