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IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2010& Moore, 2008) and maintaining existing social networks (Stefanone & Jang, 2007). Indeed, self disclosurevia blogs was found to directly contribute to bloggers’ subjective psychological well-being (Ko & Kuo,2009).With their increasing popularity, blogs have been gathering more attention from researchers as well.Prior studies on diary-style blogs have reported on the topics of blogs, motivations of bloggers, andconsequences of blogging as mentioned above. In this study, we aim to contribute to the understanding ofpeople’s blogging behavior by exploring factors across demographical, personal trait, and contextualdimensions. Specifically, we examined the relationships between gender, self disclosure tendency,extraversion, perceived identifiability, and perceived vulnerability. The relationships between these factorswith online self disclosure via blogs are discussed below to formulate formal research questions andhypotheses presented herein.2. LITERATURE REVIEW2.1 Gender and Self DisclosurePrior research suggests men and women communicate in different styles and for different social objectives(Eakins & Eakins, 1978, Tannen, 1990). Gender differences have long been observed particularly in terms ofself disclosure (Dindia & Allen, 1992, Morgan, 1976). Females were found to have a higher tendency todisclose their emotions than males, particularly to their spouses and loved ones (Snell et al., 1988). Dindiaand Allen's (1992) meta analyses concluded that females talked about themselves with their close socialnetworks more than males did. These differences suggest that gender should be taken into considerationwhen studying diary-style blogging.Recent research on self disclosure via computer-mediated channels, however, has mixed findings. Incomparison between paper and computer-mediated communication, Weisband and Kiesler (1996) did notfind statistically significant differences between men and women. Similarly, Barak and Gluck-Ofri’s (2007)study in online forums reported that overall there was no gender disparity in self disclosure level, althoughfemale respondents were more reciprocal than their male counterparts. In the context of blogs, the effects ofgender are also inconclusive overall. For example, Chiou and Wan (2006) reported gender differencesamong Taiwanese teenage bloggers when discussing sex-related topics. A content analysis by Herring et al.(2005) also found that women were more likely to create personal blogs. However, Huffaker and Calvert(2005) reported same percentages of bloggers of both genders to discuss romantic relationships in their blogs.Given the range of gender differences in communications offline and in computer-mediated media discussedabove, the following research question is proposed:RQ1: Is there a gender difference in perceived level of self disclosure on blogs?2.2 Personal Traits and Self DisclosureOne central issue in studying self disclose is the effect of individual differences, or the “actor” (discloser)effect. (Berger & Derlega, 1987). The actor effect has been documented by various studies (Miller & Kenny,1986). For example, Levesque et al. (2002) reported in their study of college students that some individualsconsistently disclose more than others across partners and topics. This actor effect has been observed acrossonline and offline worlds, too. Chiou and Wan’s (2006) study on adolescents showed that real-life selfdisclosure tendency persisted in cyberspace. Accordingly, we propose a general actor effect such thatH1: Face-to-face self disclosure tendencies are positively related to perceived levels of self disclosure onblogs.In addition, we explore whether or not personality plays a role in bloggers’ decisions to post personalinformation online. Personality is a widely studied aspect of individual differences along which people varysystematically. In particular, we focus on the trait of extraversion, which is one of the most widely studiedpersonality dimensions and is included in many measures of personality (Watson & Clark, 1997).Extraverted persons are typically characterized by sociability, gregariousness, and assertion (Barrick &Mount, 1991). They are enthusiastic about establishing social connections. Following the discussion above245