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Laypeople Blog About Fruit and Vegetables for Self-Expression and Dietary InfluenceAnna-Mari Simunaniemi a , Helena Sandberg b , Agneta Andersson a & Margaretha Nydahl aa Department of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics , University of Uppsalab Media and Communication Studies , University of LundPublished online: 02 May 2011.

To cite this article: Anna-Mari Simunaniemi , Helena Sandberg , Agneta Andersson & Margaretha Nydahl (2011) LaypeopleBlog About Fruit and Vegetables for Self-Expression and Dietary Influence, Health Communication, 26:7, 621-630, DOI:10.1080/10410236.2011.561520

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Health Communication, 26: 621–630, 2011Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1041-0236 print / 1532-7027 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10410236.2011.561520

Laypeople Blog About Fruit and Vegetables for Self-Expressionand Dietary Influence

Anna-Mari SimunaniemiDepartment of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics

University of Uppsala

Helena SandbergMedia and Communication Studies

University of Lund

Agneta Andersson and Margaretha NydahlDepartment of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics

University of Uppsala

Private health information websites run by laypeople are more often visited than websites ofofficial agencies. Understanding the role of weblogs in dietetic communication—i.e., sharingpersonal perceptions on healthy eating—is still lacking. This study aims to describe the natureof noncommercial Swedish blogs with fruits and vegetables (F&V)-related content and toidentify different blogger types. A qualitative content analysis with abduction was performedon 50 weblogs. Most bloggers presented themselves as women. Only one-third reported theirage (range 17 to over 50 years). The bloggers had either an active or passive influential pur-pose, and they approached F&V through either lived or mediated experiences. From these twodimensions, four F&V blogger ideal types were identified: the Persuader, the Authority, theExhibitionist, and the Mediator. Particularly women wrote about their lived experiences closeto the personal level, whereas men were more equally distributed across the different idealtypes. Self-expression (typical for the Exhibitionist) and purpose to influence others’ diets(typical for the Persuader and the Authority) were frequently expressed in these weblogs.The current findings on blogging purposes, approaches, and F&V blogger types may help toimprove online dietetic communication, which sets new challenges for media strategies ofhealth and nutritional professionals.

Fruits and vegetables (F&V) have potential health effectsagainst chronic diseases (Alinia, Hels, & Tetens, 2009;Chan & Giovannucci, 2010; Dauchet, Amouyel, Hercberg,& Dallongeville, 2006; La Vecchia, 2009; WHO, 2003b).Increasing F&V consumption has for a long time beenone of the most solid nutritional guidelines interna-tionally (Lichtenstein et al., 2006; Nordic NutritionRecommendations: Integrating Nutrition and PhysicalActivity, 2004; WHO, 2003a). However, there still are

Correspondence should be addressed to Anna-Mari Simunaniemi, De-partment of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Uppsala, Box 560,SE-751 22 Uppsala, Sweden. E-mail: anna-mari.simunaniemi@ikv.uu.se

population groups whose consumption is often below therecommended levels (Simunaniemi, Andersson, & Nydahl,2009). Not only are dietary habits based on knowledgebut, according to Warde (1997), food is a means of cul-tural expression. Higher F&V consumption is associatedwith positive perceptions (Bihan et al., 2010; Crawford,Ball, Mishra, Salmon, & Timperio, 2007) and social norms(Croker, Whitaker, Cooke, & Wardle, 2009; Sorensenet al., 2007; Thompson, Bachman, Baranowski, & Cullen,2006). The generic nutritional messages from the nutri-tional authorities may not be relevant to unique individ-uals (Goldberg, 2000), and according to Mager (2009),online practices of lay people should be taken seriously into

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consideration because their strategies of making sense of sci-entific knowledge do not necessarily correspond to experts’visions.

Computer-mediated communication is an important wayto exchange and construct ideas, beliefs, and understandingsin social interactions (Herring, 1996). More than 80% of theSwedish population has access to the Internet at home, anda majority (64%) of 9- to 79-year-olds use the Internet ona daily basis (Nordicom-Sverige, 2008). From a perspectiveof health and diet, the Internet has become an increasinglyimportant source for information but also a communicationchannel with both health professionals and peers (Goldberg,2000; Jarratt & Mahaffie, 2007; Kummervold et al., 2008).In particular, the social dimensions of this new medium havegained more interest in the last few years. People communi-cate personal information with strangers whom they do notknow in real life but who nonetheless can have a significantinfluence on their lives (Miller & Shepherd, 2004).

One type of potentially health-influencing Internet sites isthe weblog—a frequently modified website containing datedentries in reverse chronological order (Herring, Scheidt,Kouper, & Wright, 2007). Weblogs have during the recentyears become a distinct style of online communication(Kennedy, 2004), because the issues raised in them are notidentical to those presented in the traditional mainstreammedia (“New media, old media,” 2010). In the United States,every third Internet user reads weblogs, and 12% of the usersreport having their own weblog (Smith, 2008). On the otherhand, in Sweden 6% of 9- to 79-year-olds read a weblogon a typical day (Nordicom-Sverige, 2008). Weblog authors,called bloggers, are often young (Jung, Youn, & McClung,2007; Lenhart & Fox, 2006) laypeople (Herring, Scheidt,Wright, & Bonus, 2005) who wish to share their thoughtsand experiences with others on public websites (Adams,2010). Weblogs in general are often regarded as onlinediaries (Gurak & Antonijevic, 2008) or personal journals(Lenhart & Fox, 2006), and they are more often written byfemales (Pedersen & Macafee, 2007) and teenagers (Herringet al., 2005; Pedersen & Macafee, 2007) than by men andolder age groups. The offline identity of a given blogger israrely known, unless specifically disclosed (Taylor, 1999).But a blogger’s claimed identity is as crucial as the real onewhen it comes to interpreting and adopting the blogger’smessages (Eichhorn, 2001).

Important factors underlying the choice to host a weblogare the desire for entertainment, self-expression (Jung etal., 2007), and a leisure activity (Pedersen & Macafee,2007). Although most weblogs cover various topics (Kovic,Lulic, & Brumini, 2008), “my life and experiences” isprobably the most common topic discussed (Lenhart &Fox, 2006). Sharing practical knowledge and skills, withan intention to influence other people’s thinking, and cre-ative self-expression are the most important characteristicsfor medical bloggers (Kovic et al., 2008). Weblogs focusingon health, including diet, comprise about 1% of all weblogs

in the United States. In addition, health issues are oftenincluded as a part of other blog types. According to the PEWResearch Center, weblog texts are often emotionally loaded,focused on individuals, and ideologically passionate (“Newmedia, old media,” 2010). Bloggers also share and commentissues that are buried deep in other media. This motivatesthe use of weblogs for studying laypeople communicationaround F&V in a way that cannot be reached by focusingon the traditional media or health expert communication. Abetter theoretical as well as empirical understanding of thisnew medium of communication is needed for articulating itsrole in the future of health and dietetic communication.

According to Viswanath and Bond (2007), health com-munication is one way to diffuse knowledge, change normsand beliefs, or influence dietary behavior. Communicationin informal groups may influence individual F&V consump-tion owing to altered social norms and values (Buller et al.,1999). In fact, private websites regarding health informationare visited more often than websites authorized by officialagencies (Miller & West, 2007). In order to better under-stand the new interactive social media, particularly weblogs,we need to gain insights into how they are integrated into thelay public’s daily communication.

In the Internet and blogosphere one can self decide whatpersonal information to include, or even make up a new iden-tity. Who the individual actually is in the nonvirtual life maynot be as interesting as who the readers think the person isbased on his/her writings. Different social networking sitesoffer, at least in theory, a possibility to learn a lot about blog-gers by what they choose to display publicly (Moreno, Fost,& Christakis, 2008). This phenomenon makes it interestingto analyze what kind of individuals raise F&V issues on theirweblogs, and what information (gender, age) they choose topresent (RQ1).

Motives for blogging in general have been identifiedin previous studies. One of the common motives is enter-tainment and blogging as a free-time activity (Pedersen &Macafee, 2007), whereas some people use weblogs for infor-mation spreading (Kovic et al., 2008). However, it is notknown whether F&V-related weblog texts are similar toother blog types (RQ2). Weblogs offer a new opportunity totake a look at everyday dietetic communication and to learnmore about different blogger types behind these texts (RQ3).A theory of ideal types was found to be suitable for presen-tation of different blogger types in the present study. Idealtype typology is originally derived from Weber’s theory onideal types (Burger, 1976), but more practical applicationsfrom Eneroth (1984) and Melin-Higgins (1996) were usedas sources of inspiration.

Thus, the overall aim of this explorative study is toexamine noncommercial weblogs with F&V-related con-tent in order to understand the nature of these weblogs.Swedish weblogs are used in the present study as an exam-ple of the phenomenon. These weblogs can be assumed tobe representative to other European countries. The present

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study applies an explorative approach, which can later bevalidated in other settings. Three more specific researchquestions were:

RQ1: What background characteristics do the bloggerspresent in their weblogs?

RQ2: What can be said on the purposes for and approachesto blogging on F&V?

RQ3: What kind of blogger types can be identified from thematerial?

METHOD

Data Collection

A selection is necessary due to the large number of weblogsonline. Further, it is not possible to obtain a random sampleof all existing weblogs due to the character of the Internet.Instead of selecting weblogs explicitly focusing on F&V, anykind of F&V-related weblog entries were searched in orderto achieve the widest variation in blogger types. A purpo-sive sampling (Patton, 2002) aimed at wide variation in howF&V are presented in weblogs from nonnutritional experts.The predetermined inclusion criteria were used to select rel-evant weblog entries. Only entries with F&V-related contentthat were authorized by private persons (e.g., blogging asa leisure-time activity) for obviously noncommercial pur-poses were included. The blogs that clearly prohibited usefor research purposes were excluded from the analysis.

Ethical issues were taken into consideration when sam-pling the data. Statements made in publicly accessibleweblogs may be freely used by researchers, as long as thewebsite is cited as any other literature and any possiblyharmful details are omitted from the publication (Ess &Committee, 2002; Haigh & Jones, 2007; Haigh & Jones,2005; Wilson & Peterson, 2002). The authors followed theethical guidelines for research online (Bruckman, 2002),stating that information may be freely used without consentif (i) it is publicly archived, (ii) the archives are not passwordprotected or no registration is needed, (iii) the site policydoes not prohibit it, and (iv) the topic is not highly sensi-tive. The identification codes are presented in the text, andthe original references are available on request.

Three separate Google searches were conducted inJanuary 2009. The Swedish probing terms meaning “fruitOR vegetables,” “fruit OR vegetables blog,” and “fruit ORvegetables AND blog” resulted in more than 1.2 million pre-liminary findings. Starting from the beginning of the resultlists, and comparing each finding to the inclusion criteria,a number of separate weblog entries were selected in thisstage. Duplicate findings, entries that could no longer befound, commercial weblogs, and texts presenting F&V froma nonfood perspective were excluded. The retrospective blogarchives of the selected blogs were manually searched inorder to select all the entries with F&V related content. The

final number of analyzed weblog entries was 205 from 50separate weblogs. No more searches were conducted, as thedata analysis showed that adding new data could not bringanything new to the blogger types.

Data Analysis

At first, the blogger characteristics (gender and age) wereidentified when such information was available. The qual-itative content analysis of the weblog entries started withthe first author thoroughly reading each piece of text sepa-rately with an open attitude. The text was allowed to give animpression of the bloggers’ purposes and the approaches toF&V. In an abductive data analysis (Alvesson & Sköldberg,2008), the empirical material is successively developed andthe theory based on the literature is modified during the pro-cess. In other words, literature on applicable theories wasread in parallel with the analysis. The texts were at firstcoded using open coding (Flick, 2006), and the resultingcodes in turn were combined into more comprehensive cate-gories of two dimensions based on RQ2: approaches to andpurposes for blogging. Two final categories were identifiedfor each dimension.

The first author carried out the preliminary analysis. Toimprove inter-rater coding reliability and confirm the find-ings, all authors also read and coded a subsample of theweblogs, and the findings were compared. After discus-sions within the research team, full consensus was reachedbetween the researchers on categorizing the bloggers into theblogger ideal types. The data were originally read and ana-lyzed in Swedish and subsequently translated into Englishby a professional translator. NVivo 8 qualitative data man-agement software was used as a data management andanalysis tool (NVivo, 2008).

RESULTS

Blogger Characteristics

RQ1was aimed at identifying what characteristics the blog-gers present on themselves. Thirty-five of the 50 bloggerswere women, 12 were men, and 1 weblog was run by awoman and a man. Two of the bloggers did not reveal theirgender. Age was reported for 17 out of 50 bloggers. Fivebloggers were under 25 years, five between 25 to 29 years,and seven bloggers were ≥30 years old. The reported agerange varied from 17 to over 50 years. The number of rel-evant weblog entries within these weblogs varied from 1 to15, resulting in a total of 205 weblog entries to be analyzed.Moreover, the length of single entries varied from 19 to morethan 3800 words (mean 511 words). User statistics or otherblogger background characteristics were rarely available andare therefore not reported.

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Purposes for and Approaches to Blogging on F&V

RQ2 was “What can be said on the purposes for andapproaches to blogging on F&V?” The qualitative dataanalysis resulted in the identification of two main dimen-sions in the texts: level of influential purpose and source ofexperience.

The first dimension emerging in the material, level ofinfluential purpose, was coded either as active or passive.Quite a few of the bloggers gave dietary or cooking instruc-tions directly to their readers concerning how F&V shouldbe prepared and consumed in order to eat a healthy diet, tomake tasty food, or to consume ethically (category: activeinfluence). The instructions could be general or specificallytargeted to a reader’s question:

You should give them berries with their porridge, but whatthey get is probably also okay. Most children have normalappetites so they can deal with fructose. Different fruits havedifferent advantages so you can vary. But maybe choose anorange rather than an apple, for example. A banana is goodif you want to have something more satisfying. Fresh apri-cots are good if you don’t want it so sweet, maybe becauseof fructose intolerance or problems with increased appetite.(woman, A56)

Fruit contains a lot more energy than vegetables, so limitit to a couple a day. (woman, C74)

A few bloggers criticized the current official nutrition rec-ommendations and regarded dietitians and official nutritionauthorities as out of date, and even unreliable:

As an additional footnote let me point out that the recom-mendations from the Swedish Food Agency stating that weshould eat at least 500g of fruit and vegetables are basedon old, significantly higher values in nutritional content.So what do they mean when they say we should eat morevegetables—it’s simply to achieve the same intake of vita-mins and minerals as we did through significantly smalleramounts earlier. (man, A60)

Some bloggers shared their favorite food recipes with oth-ers, often accompanied by a description of a certain situationwhen the dish had been or was going to be prepared. Therecipes often included F&V or preparation methods thatwere less familiar to the bloggers but could be of help andinspiration to the readers:

I cook apples in a large pan and mix with a mixer. As easyas pie! � Here is a more comprehensive description (read inOur Cookbook). (woman, A29)

The most difficult thing about preparing a pumpkin is tosplit it when it’s raw—the slippery rind and the hard pulpmake it easy to slip with the knife and cut yourself. The bestand safest way is to use a sword. Stand one step from thepumpkin, swing the sword high above your head and cutstraight through the whole pumpkin. Wear some kind of gearif possible. (woman, A9)

Also, for some bloggers, environmental and ethical issueswere important. They regarded consumption of plant food ororganically produced F&V almost as a moral responsibilityto the whole humanity:

I’m a consumer who wants to make conscious decisions.I look forward to being able to help cut down on harmfulgreenhouse gases by choosing climate-labeled tomatoes, forexample. (woman, B12)

Those bloggers who were not giving instructions on theright way of consuming F&V were more focused on self-expression (category: inactive influence). These texts werenot directly intended to influence readers’ behavior, butindirect effects cannot be estimated here:

I used to buy frozen vegetables (peas/sweet corn/bell pep-per) with [brand name] sometimes when I was shopping at[name of a food store chain]. But one day last fall when I wasabout to cook the vegetables I noticed a discolored vegetablein the cooking water. Naturally I fished it out and then I real-ized that it was a little brown snail. I threw out the pan ofvegetables because I didn’t like the idea of the snail cookingwith the vegetables. I didn’t find any more snails in the bag,but I checked carefully when I scooped up the vegetablesinto the pan. (man, C56)

In the second dimension, source of experience, the describedexperiences were coded as either lived experiences or medi-ated experiences; this was inspired by Thompson’s discus-sions in Media and Modernity (1995). Lived experiencesare acquired in day-to-day life, whereas mediated experi-ences are acquired through mediated interaction (p. 227–28).They were descriptions of something that the bloggers,their family members, friends, or in some cases colleagueshad experienced personally. The experiences were oftenpresented in an informal diary-type style:

Now my fiancé and I have just eaten some food. Or well, itmay not have been food exactly, mini-baguettes with cheeseand bell pepper and [brand name] juice, the orange, appleand mandarin tasting one. I love that juice. I’m not a greatfan of juice because I don’t like it when there’s a lot of pulpand stuff in it but there’s no stuff like that in this one so I likeit and the taste is fantastic. (woman, A26)

Tonight [the blogger’s daughter] got her Saturday candy!A bag of dried fruit! I thought we could try somethinghealthy and see whether she liked it and she sure did! Todayshe’s been sitting snuggled up on the coach with a blanketaround her and with a bowl of dried fruit on her lap. (woman,A12)

Expressions of personal likings and taste preferences werealso typical of the lived experiences dimension. Healtharguments were sometimes used to motivate these personalpreferences:

Avocado has become my favorite lately! It’s a fattyfruit that’s healthy. I mean healthy fat, like nuts and fish.(woman, A22)

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Also, comments on the price and availability of F&V werepresented:

Personally I buy basic ingredients at one store, good andcheap cheese at another and I like to buy fresh vegetablesand fruit at the market place. So you should map out whereyou can buy different things, or rather product groups. Thenyou can do your shopping both well and cheaply. (man, B15)

Some of the texts included F&V-related dietary issues, suchas descriptions of new diets that the bloggers had tried orwanted to try:

I’ll mostly live on drinks from different fruits, vegetables andberries this week to clean out my body, and then I’ll be eat-ing more normally again. Roffe and I ran to the store andbought fruit and vegetables for two hundred crowns, so nowI can live for a couple of days. That made a big bowl offruit and lots of good vegetables and then some lime, lemonand things like that. Everything that’s good for the body.(woman, A26)

The other category of the dimension source of experi-ence was mediated experiences of F&V. The bloggers thenreported something they had read or heard from anothersource or person without directly experiencing it themselves.Some examples of the referred sources were national andinternational newspapers, nutritional experts, governmentalauthorities (e.g, National Food Administration), scientificarticles, cookbooks, and other bloggers:

Yes, apparently we can get stomach illnesses from importedvegetables, fruit and frozen berries, according to an article inSvD [Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish daily paper] + [URL-link] (B13)

Or maybe somewhat easier to remember: three fruits andtwo big fists full of vegetables every day. You can read moreabout dietary instructions from the Swedish Food Agency[URL-link]. (B13)

Mediated experiences also included discussions of politicaldecision making on the national and EU level:

This week the European Parliament in the Committee onAgriculture will vote on a proposal to subsidize fruit forschool children. The proposal is crazy in many ways. Theaim is said to be to promote children’s health, but in actual-ity they just want to distribute agricultural subsidies to fruitfarmers in Southern Europe. (man, A83)

Four Blogger Ideal Types

The research question three (RQ3) was aimed to answerwhat kind of F&V blogger types can be identified from thematerial. After identifying two dimensions presented earlier,each blogger was categorized into one of four different com-binations of these dimensions based on all the F&V-relatedcontent on their weblogs. The four blogger ideal types arepresented in Figure 1.

Dimension 1: Level of influential purpose

Active influence Inactive influence

Dim

ensi

on 2

: So

urce

of

expe

rien

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Liv

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Blogger type 1: The Persuader

”saved” Educators

Personal interest in the topic

Blogger type 3: The Exhibitionist

Self-expression Everyday life focus on “me”

Med

iate

d ex

peri

ence

Blogger type 2: The Authority

Etc. political opinion builders Writing behind a professional role

Blogger type 4: The Mediator

Neutral Reporter Observer Not active

FIGURE 1 The blogger ideal types in weblogs with fruit and vegetablecontent.

The first blogger ideal type was the Persuader, whosetexts were based on lived experiences and who also wasclearly trying to influence his/her readers on dietary issues.The persuaders regarded themselves as “saved”; many ofthem had gone through something that had given them aninsider perspective on the importance of dietary choices.These bloggers might think they were doing something goodand seemed to be trying to educate others so that they wouldmake the right choices to increase, decrease, or modify theirF&V consumption, for example:

See that you eat berries, preferably the kind that grow wildin nature—they’re not processed to the point of being unrec-ognizable with lots of water and sugar—and less healthythings, like fruit. I strongly believe that we are meant toeat seasonal products, so eat berries when they are in seasonhere at home, in Sweden. (woman, A60)

Another blogger tried to challenge her readers to make envi-ronmental friendly lifestyle changes and tell about them onthe comment section. The blogger gave some examples ofwhat she is already doing for the environment:

I buy organically grown vegetables very often.(woman, A12)

The second blogger ideal type with an active intention toinfluence other people’s dietary behavior was the Authority,who was characterized by having a more public or profes-sional status in society, such as a European Union (EU)politician. Unlike the Persuaders, the Authority bloggersreferred only or mostly to mediated experiences instead of totheir own personal experiences. Personal opinions, if stated,were justified by references to political documents and actsas well as other official documents. These bloggers wantednot only to influence individual readers, but also to change

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the whole society in a wider perspective. F&V were dis-cussed in relation to the society, industry, and institutions,such as schools:

Today, the EU Parliament decided that school children inthe EU countries will get fruit at school! They raised thesum of money to be used from 90 million to 500 million.Moreover, the fruit is to be produced within the EU. As ifthis wasn’t enough, the Parliament is violating the subsidyprinciple, because it may not after all be at the top EU levelwhere the best competence is found concerning whetherchildren should or should not have fruit at school, besidesthis puts up a new trade barrier against the surrounding worldgiven the demand that the fruit must be cultivated in the EU.(man, A17)

Not all the bloggers categorized as Authorities were politi-cians, but some of them were individuals with strong interesttowards diet and nutrition. They read scientific articles andofficial documents, and based their conclusions on whatthey had understood instead of their personal experiencesas the Persuaders did. The following example illustrateshow the blogger interprets the role of fructose, one type ofcarbohydrate common in fruit.

It is a debated issue whether fructose is favorable to typeII diabetes or not. I interpret those studies I have read asfructose is considerate at the moment, because you don’tget any immediate inflammations, unlike with glucose thatraises blood sugar very much. (woman, A56)

The other ideal types did not have a clearly stated inten-tion to influence other people’s dietary behavior. The thirdtype was the Exhibitionists, whose main purpose for blog-ging was to write about themselves and to focus on per-sonal everyday life. These weblogs resembled traditionaldiaries with strongly personal reports on everyday situa-tions, although made publicly available on the Internet. F&Vwere mentioned infrequently, and only when somethingunexpected or exciting had been going on in the blogger’spersonal life that caused the blogger to comment on F&V.The Exhibitionists did not appear to be particularly inter-ested in the influence their texts may or may not have ontheir readers:

BBQ at Mommy’s! I grill salmon and vegetables and then wedrink wine and eat melon with mint salad. (woman, A32)

I’ve been thinking for many hours now that I should’vegone into the kitchen and got something to eat, but I stillhaven’t gotten there. Because I try to be as healthy as I can,it will certainly be watermelon, grapes, a pear and a banana.It feels best for my body to eat like that in the evening.(woman, C10)

Also descriptions on personal likings or childhood memoriescould make a topic for a blog entry:

I’ve always been delighted with nearly unripe fruit and veg-etables. Juicy and ripe is nothing for me. I can still long forthe garden in my childhood and those sour green apples in

TABLE 1Distribution of Weblogs from Different Blogger Ideal Types Across

Genders

Gender

Blogger ideal type Women Men Total

Authority 2 5 7Persuader 9 3 12Exhibitionist 23 3 26Mediator 1 1 2Total 35 12 47

Two bloggers did not reveal their gender, one weblog was maintainedby a woman + a man

“my” apple tree, or why not a handful of gooseberries hardas a brick from the bush right next to it? (woman, A15)

The fourth and last ideal type was the Mediator, whichwas also the least frequently presented type in the material.Characteristic of these bloggers was a passive, outsider posi-tion. They mediate others’ experiences and opinions, tryingto distance their personal life from the texts. These bloggersmight present statistics or other hard facts on their weblogsmore as an interesting curiosity or observation, not with aview to making any judgments. Typically, pure food recipeblogs without personal comments could be classified underthis ideal type. The only Mediator blogger in the presentsample was a pure fact blog on different F&V:

Raisins are dried grapes and they contain as much as 60%sugar, mostly fructose. In addition, they contain high con-centrations of antioxidants, but relatively little vitamin C.(woman, A46)

A distribution of different blogger ideal types by gender ispresented in Table 1. The Exhibitionist type was clearly mostcommon among women (23 out of 35), whereas men weremore evenly distributed across all the blogger ideal types.

DISCUSSION

The present study offers an opportunity to examine howlaypeople approach F&V in their weblogs, their purposesfor blogging, as well as which F&V blogger ideal typescan be identified. Two dimensional approaches were iden-tified, level of influential purpose and source of experience.Further, each blogger can be categorized into one of fourblogger ideal types based on these dimensions. The mostimportant findings and their future implications are dis-cussed in more detail next, according to the previouslydescribed research questions.

Blogger Characteristics

The information on the bloggers presented on the weblogswas limited. Most of those bloggers who reported their age

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were young, which is not surprising given that the Internetis most widely used among 15- to 64-year-olds (Nordicom-Sverige, 2008). The findings indicate that, for the time being,weblogs may not be the optimal communication channelfor reaching older people. However, age or other back-ground characteristics of the bloggers were in most casesnot presented. Although we must be very careful in makingany estimations on actual sociodemographic characteristicsof the bloggers, the finding actually is a representation ofthe current nature of the blogosphere. Despite the limitedknowledge on the bloggers, many people are reading andcommenting on their texts. This may be a matter of trust-worthiness that can be associated with the bloggers. Healthprofessionals do have a formal competence, but personswriting on their lived experiences, such as Persuaders andExhibitionists in the present study, may be perceived as hav-ing evidence-based trustworthiness. As a comparison, manyofficial health authority sites do not reveal personal informa-tion on the person behind the text. How blog readers actuallyperceive different bloggers might be an interesting researchquestion to take a closer look at.

Bloggers’ Purposes and Approaches

In the present study, most of the weblogs analyzed coveredindividual’s everyday life and thoughts in general. Theseexperiences were presented in weblogs with a diary-typefunction and mainly for the purpose of self-expression. Tothese bloggers, maintaining good health and well-being waslargely a result of individual dietary choices, and F&V werediscussed in close relation to individual decision making.Personal purposes like self-expression (Jung et al., 2007)and presenting “my life” (McCullagh, 2008) are known tobe important reasons for bloggers to keep updating theirpersonal websites, and F&V bloggers seem to share thesepurposes. It is established that women write more oftenthan men do about family life and disclose personal expe-riences, whereas men prefer information (hard facts) andopinion making (Pedersen & Macafee, 2007). Overall, menseem to blog less frequently on F&V, and the current datasupport that finding. Medical bloggers are generally tryingto influence other people’s thinking (Kovic et al., 2008),which also was found for some bloggers in the present study.However, blogging for the purpose of self-expression wasmore common.

One of the two main dimensions found in the blog textsis source of experience with the categories lived or medi-ated experiences, earlier described by Thompson (1995).According to Thompson, lived experiences in general havebecome less important in society, and it is sometimes evendifficult to differentiate between mediated and lived experi-ences. Typical of the mediated experiences is that F&V areseen as part of a wider context, such as the environment,political strategies, or society as whole. On the other hand,those writing about lived experiences mostly consider F&V

in relation to specific situations, mainly on an individual andhousehold level. The bloggers mediating experiences oftenreferred to official documents or scientific research, andthese sources could be used to confirm the blogger’s opin-ions or to put controversial topics on the agenda. The dietaryinstructions given by bloggers were not always in line withofficial recommendations, but instead tried to convince read-ers of the benefit of some not established dietary advice.The authors agree with Korp (2006), that it is important toempower individuals to critically evaluate different onlinesources in relation to their personal needs. However, thisinvestigation did not try to judge the content of weblog textsfrom a nutritional scientific perspective, although it could bea research question worth further analysis. The focus wason actual information-gathering practices of Internet users,which in turn can only be understood in relation to the wayin which information is provided (Mager, 2009), in otherwords, in studying the impressions from bloggers’ texts.

Blogger Ideal Types

Each blogger was classified into one of four ideal bloggertypes based on how they approach F&V in their blog texts.According to Weber’s theory (Burger, 1976), ideal types cap-ture the typical characteristics of a group of cases, and theyare explicit while they also cover the whole material so thateach case really can be assigned to one ideal type. However,it is important to emphasize that all bloggers cannot neces-sarily be classified under only one ideal type, but almost allof them contain a certain dimension to a higher degree.

The Persuaders give dietary instructions that are inconflict with official guidelines to varying degrees. Thereaders of these blogs may have problems distinguishingbetween “official” and “nonofficial” information because thebloggers present themselves more or less as experts on thetopic. These problems have previously been reported byMinol, Spelsberg, Schulte, and Morris (2007). However, itwas beyond the scope of the present study to compare thegiven instructions with official nutritional guidelines.

The Authority bloggers are very similar to the so-called political or filter blogs presented by Herring, Scheidt,Wright, and Bonus (2005). It may be concluded thatAuthority bloggers are more outwardly focused comparedto personal blogs of Persuaders and Exhibitionists, whichare inwardly focused. The Authorities try to direct reader’sattention to information from other websites, and personalopinion only concerns a particular topic, instead of events inthe blogger’s personal life. As an example in the study sam-ple, the EU initiative on the school fruit scheme was raisedby some political bloggers, who also added their personalpolitical views.

The most common of the F&V blogger ideal typesis the Exhibitionist, which is particularly dominated bywomen. This supports the previous findings showing thatsharing one’s personal ideas and experiences is one of

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the main motives for blogging in general (Adams, 2010).Although Exhibitionists mainly describe everyday situationswith infrequent references to F&V, these bloggers may stillbe important opinion leaders (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955),because even media texts that are not directly intended toinfluence people’s health or that do not contain explicithealth messages may still have impact on people’s healthdevelopment (Welch Cline, 2003). Also an interesting pointof view from Miller and Shepherd (2004) is that the Internettechnology makes it easier to be either an exhibitionist ora voyeur, a role that the readers of these blogs might take.According to Goffman’s theory on the presentation of self(1959), the interaction in a setting is compared to a dra-maturgical performance on a stage where people producecertain impressions on themselves. Thus, the Exhibitionistsmay consciously show certain sides of their private life toshape the impression they want to share.

The last blogger type, the Mediator, includes only oneexample in the present study material, because weblogswithout any personal comments were excluded in the datacollection phase. This does not affect the typology, however,because ideal types are theoretical constructions and carica-tures of real-life phenomena, all of which do not actuallyneed to be found in the data. The point, however, is thatthey might exist and thus that they might also be empiricallytested (Eneroth, 1984). Similar methods of categorizing phe-nomena and summing up observations are widely used by allof us in our everyday lives.

This study has important implications within the contextof health and dietetic communication by laypeople. It showsthat F&V discussions are a vivid part of weblogs, and nutri-tional professionals should not ignore this phenomenon. Ifwe are to promote increased F&V consumption of popula-tion subgroups, we need to improve our understanding ofhow F&V are integrated into their everyday communication.According to Springston (2001) and Bennett and Manheim(2006), online access and fragmented, individualized distri-bution of information have shifted the traditional sender-based information model toward a receiver-based model.This democratization of communication has fundamentallychallenged the power relations within media communica-tion, including the roles of traditional health authorities. Inline with Orsini’s (2010) recommendations that home healthcare agencies should be active in social media, health andnutritional professionals also must decide whether they wantto become more visible in the Internet communication arena,including the blogosphere. The identification of bloggerideal types in the present study showed that F&V bloggersare not a homogeneous group. Although the results do notshow any statistics or are not directly generalizable, theyshow a tendency toward favoring weblog texts with livedexperiences and inward focus on the individuals themselves.In other words, F&V-related discussions are presented froma subjective perspective, which differs from the traditional,often rather impersonal expert-led health communication

with focus on scientific facts. The actual influence of dif-ferent blogger ideal types on blog readers and their dieteticbehavior should be studied separately. Maybe this typol-ogy further can be useful for developing more effectiveonline health communication in the field of nutrition anddietetics.

Methodological Discussion

Critics might say that everything written in weblogs is com-pletely subjective and limited to what the authors chooseto disclose. This is undeniably true, but at the same timethis is also one of the strengths of the study. People con-struct their worldview in a subjective way, and in relationto this subjectivity, the data collection method used is notfundamentally different from any other type of self-reports,such as questionnaires with open-ended items (Williams &Merten, 2008).

Another methodological strength compared to other alter-native data collection methods, such as interviews or struc-tured questionnaires, is that the current approach allowedanalysis of authentic online behaviors without interferencefrom the researcher (Williams & Merten, 2008) and itcaptured everything that was publicly available to the par-ticipants in the setting (Garcia, Standlee, Bechkoff, & Yan,2009; Kollock & Smith, 1996). Thus, the data analysis couldbegin from the original, unprocessed data, which were notcolored by the researcher’s theoretical and/or methodologi-cal choices (Boyatzis, 1998; Flick, 2006).

Some methodological limitations are recognized withthis investigation. Questions concerning the limited accessto background data on the bloggers, or that the weblogsare most probably presentations of those individuals mostinterested in F&V-related topics, are relevant. On the otherhand, it is an advantage that these naturally occurring data(Silverman, 2005, 2006) are available to anyone with anInternet connection.

One of the challenges faced in conducting the presentstudy was the use of an Internet search engine that onlyallows access to a sample of all the texts on the Internet.However, this problem is a real-life phenomenon sharedwith all Internet users looking for Web-based material usingsearch engines. The Internet is also constantly changing,and two searches will not lead to identical results. Differentsearches made at different points in time give partly dif-ferent results. Searching with other probing terms, suchas “apple” or “strawberry,” for example, would have ledto other weblog entries than the terms “fruit OR vegeta-bles” did. Nevertheless, the aim of the present explorativestudy was to gain insight into this rather new and seldomresearched phenomenon within the health communicationarena. More specified ways of weblog selection could betested, perhaps to follow up some weblogs over a longerperiod of time or even to contact the bloggers and theirreaders in person for interviewing them on their views.

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CONCLUSIONS

The present study shows that F&V bloggers can be clas-sified into four blogger ideal types. In this study it wasalso shown that women focus more on their personal lifeand self-expression, whereas mediated experiences seem topredominate among male bloggers. Health and nutritionalprofessionals today are facing new challenges regarding theincreasing online communication. To identify diet-relatedissues and blogger types relevant to different subgroups mayhelp the professionals to better communicate with the tar-geted audience. To change dietary habits is complex, andtraditional ways of presenting nutritional information maynot be influential for increasing F&V consumption. Thepresent findings may be a good starting point to developour understanding about everyday dietetic communicationonline. The actual importance of different blogger types ondietary habits and attitudes will be an interesting issue forfuture studies to investigate.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was supported by grants from GastronomiskaAkademiens Stiftelse and Stiftelsen Uppsala HushållsskolasFond, Sweden.

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