A bloggers' perspective on responsibility in sustainable lifestyle blogs

The internet has changed the way we communicate. Through blogs it is now possible for everyone to raise a voice that can be heard. Sustainable lifestyle bloggers provoke an opportunity to spread environmental knowledge and encourage individuals to embrace a sustainable lifestyle. However, when di...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lehne, Annabell
Format: Second cycle, A2E
Language:Swedish
Inglés
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/9807/
Description
Summary:The internet has changed the way we communicate. Through blogs it is now possible for everyone to raise a voice that can be heard. Sustainable lifestyle bloggers provoke an opportunity to spread environmental knowledge and encourage individuals to embrace a sustainable lifestyle. However, when discussing the relation between citizenship and blogs, particular types of blogs such as lifestyle, fashion and online diaries are often not considered relevant in studies (Sinanan, 2014). The social practice of sustainable lifestyle bloggers is likely to influence the citizens' values, perception and assessment of the problem. Hence, it is significant to understand how sustainable lifestyle bloggers appoint responsibility and how they frame the citizens' role and their responsibility towards causing environmental threats through everyday activities and consumption habits. This thesis aims to investigate how sustainable lifestyle bloggers ascribe responsibility to themselves in the role of sustainable lifestyle bloggers. The material for the analysis was obtained through five structured written interviews with five sustainable lifestyle bloggers as well as through four blog posts from each blogger. As the method of analysis a qualitative structured content analysis based on Mayring (2010) was chosen. Further, this research is based on the epistemological view of social constructionism. This thesis concludes that the bloggers assign a high individual responsibility to citizens for making sustainable consumption choices and that sustainable lifestyle bloggers hold the power to create a space where a dialogue and deliberation can occur. In this space online communities are created and citizenship can be practiced and exercised individually (Luck & Ginanti, 2013).