Writing from Experience Presentations of Gender Identity on Weblogs

This article examines how weblog authors present their online gender identity, in order to establish how these modes of presentation fit into the research landscape about gender identity and computer-mediated communication (CMC). After a preliminary descriptive analysis of a sample of Dutch and Flemish weblogs, the authors conduct a qualitative content analysis of four of these ‘blogs’. They conclude that these weblog writers present their gender identity through narratives of ‘everyday life’ that remain closely related to the binary gender system. However, their performance of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ is more diffuse and heterogeneous than some theories in the field of gender and CMC would assume. In addition, the act of diary writing on weblogs can be understood as challenging the masculine connotation of the weblog as an ICT, demonstrating that the use of a technology is pivotal in shaping the ways in which technologies themselves are conceived of as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’.