This weekend, I was searching for eBooks about media ethics at Safari Books Online. I’ve discovered a work about a more general topic, namely Blogging as a form of communication. Sarah Pedersen’s Why Blog? provides a wholly original and well researched perspective to the topic of the work’s title, in essence, Blogging.

An excerpt from the first chapter of the text by Sarah Pedersen:

For the most part, the discussion focuses on personal rather than corporate blogs, although the data covers both filter- and journal-type blogs. I will also focus primarily on the British blogosphere, although comparisons will be made with American bloggers. Over the past decade, much more research has been conducted on the motivations of bloggers – both in the United States and elsewhere – and reference is made throughout the book to these findings. Subjects to be covered in this book include the blog as a diary or letters to the editor, blogging as therapy, blogging for friends and blogging for strangers, privacy issues, blogging as a form of journalism or publishing, blogging as political activism, blogging for profit and whether women and men (or Americans and Brits) differ in their reasons for blogging. I will also touch on professional blogging as a form of PR or citizen journalism, but these subjects are not the focus of this book, which mainly aims to interrogate the subject of what motivates ordinary men and women to blog.

– Why Blog?

Published in 2010, the book is available at Safari Books Online , in bookstores, and of course at the library.

Safari Books Online offers an index of books from the publisher, Chandos Publishing (an imprint of Woodhead Publishing Limited, Oxford, circa 2010)