In addition to sporadic participation from those on the periphery of the PITC blogging community, Cinpinski has also noticed increases in the core of her regular readership. She attributes the growth to “linking and commenting.” For example, when Cinpinski visits the blogs of her readers, she will leave comments, and they will do likewise. She explains it as a “give and take” process:
“When you talk about community, it’s interesting because the former blogger [of PITC] set up her own network of people, and they still read, and I added my own, and now everyone is linked to each other.”A study by Nardi establishes blogging as “social activity, a form of social communication in which blogger and audience are intimately related through the writing and reading of blogs.” PITC is an excellent representation of this idea because of the interaction that Cinpinski and her regular readers engage in. She notes: “I try to get people to comment. The purpose of a blog to me is to put opinions out there and be honest, get responses from other people, and form a dialogue with your readers. Then these readers speak to other [bloggers].” Likewise, Blanchard argues that “a sense of community may develop and be shared between [interactive blogs]” because it will “decrease the dependency of the virtual community on any one blog author and increase the chances of viability for the virtual blog community as a whole.”
As Cinpinski previously mentioned, she wanted to increase the strength of her core readership, hoping that it would be a gateway for interaction and communication with all corners of the blogosphere. Bloggers who regularly interact with other bloggers actively attempt to build communities through networks of links and discussion, further adding to the varied dynamics of participation.
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