Writing about emotional topics by keeping a journal is usually a good idea. There is quite a bit of evidence to show that it makes people feel better, both physically and mentally. Talking out everyday experiences helps people's equilibrium, too. But, increasingly, mood-regulating activities like these are moving into cyberspace - in the shape of e-mails and journal-like weblogs, or 'blogs'. Entries are made by those who visit them, especially the young and relatively well-heeled. What is going on here, and is it a good thing? The internet limits, and in some senses shapes, interactions between individuals, and between the blogger and the audience as it is conceived by the blogger. First, this is because they are reduced to mainly text- and image-based communication. This has its good points. Writing about emotionally traumatic experiences online has been shown to have positive long-term effects. That makes web-based applications a relatively inexpensive and flexible option for treatment, especially in large-scale disasters like last year's tsunami. Setting up e-mail connections in the field could significantly increase the number of people clinicians could treat. This use of cyberspace has implications for everyone's well-being. Some blogs are written by highly original cross-pollinators of insight and information. But the majority of bloggers are less sparkling individuals: navel-staring teenagers and adults sharing the mind-numbing minutiae of their daily lives. In other words, this is the very stuff of diaries. A blog is not a journal, though. They differ in a few significant respects. For one, a blog is meant to be read by other people, whereas journals generally are not. But a blogger more explicitly creates a persona and voice that are tailored to the blog's audience. Because the process takes place in a public space, creating and maintaining that persona takes on something of the falseness and hype of an advertising campaign or political spin. So, oddly, a blog - far more than a two-way e-mail exchange - resembles a performance. This is the reverse of what happens in the offline social sphere, in which a conversation has more of a performance quality than does journal-writing. A blog is a chance to publicise yourself; a way to enjoy your 15 minutes of fame without the interference or cost of a production company or an agent. Yet, it retains something of the private individuality of a diary. The self is censored in all social situations - just being polite involves lying. But in blogs, one is more likely to notice exactly the sort of package one is aiming for - a heightening of awareness that, again, parallels diary-writing. Or, at least, I hope this is the case. Because if it is not, then most bloggers represent the downside of the democratisation of fame. No doubt both phenomena are at work. Bloggers heighten their own awareness, but they also resemble reality-show participants, in which the consciousness of viewer ratings is replaced by a sort of online secondary-school popularity contest. Any potential insight is submerged under a gush of superficiality and kitsch. The more this new social space matures, the more it resembles the offline world - because it is beginning to be populated with more 'ordinary' people. As the colonisation continues, social skills become increasingly transferable. A recent study showed that the people who benefited most from disclosing things about themselves online were the most outgoing people, with higher-quality social networks offline. A case of life imitating cyberspace? Jean Nicol looks at everyday issues from the point of view of a psychologist everydaypsychologist@yahoo.com
