Different blog use, different participation

Though it seems to be more popular for most people to discuss some issues with their friends on the micro blogs such as Twitter or community websites such as Facebook, there is still a doubt that these websites would play a role to facilitate civic engagement or promote the frequency for talking about public affairs. It is said that the success of Obama‟s case did intrigue politicians‟ attention for the effect of blog in Taiwan. That is why the study should be traced to the experiences of blog in America. There are some surveys which improved that the number of blogs have grown since 2001(Levy, 2002; Henning, 2003). In this case, Wallsten (2007) indicated that political blogs seems to have been grown faster than other types of blogs. In order to find the relationship between blog use and political participation, this study will focus on political blogs. Researchers pointed that the role of blog has become an open forum for users to address issues(Bruns, 2006; Cristol, 2002; Wall, 2006) and some researchers further claimed that blogs have been portrayed as political outlets (Kerbel and Bloom, 2005; Sweetser and Kaid, 2008; Trammell et al., 2006b) where allow users to express their self-perspective and access to different perspectives on an issue (Herring et al., 2004; Trammell and Keshelashvili, 2005; Papacharissi, 2004; Thompson, 2003). In brief, blog users also play a key role in the blog world. For this reason, the study will explore the connotation of blog users and further examine the relationship between blog use and political participation. But it seems to be less studies about types of blog users that could assess the effects of communication on blogs more precisely. To target more real supporters, this article will categorize the types of users into three kinds and measure the extent to their separate behavior which linked to political participation.