Keeping a diary in cyberspace

This research was conducted into people who post their diaries on the Internet (hereinafter referred to as Web diaries) to reveal the psychological implications of writing a diary in cyberspace. A total of 1,529 people were extracted from full‐text search engines and collections of Web diary links and surveyed. Invitations to participate were sent to the authors of the extracted home pages by e‐mail and the survey itself was conducted with the use of a home page form. There were 377 valid responses, giving a response rate of 24.7%. The Web diaries were broken down into four types: (a) self‐conscious records of fact (memoirs); (b) records of fact conscious of a relationship with the reader (journals); (c) self‐conscious expressions of sentiment (“(narrowly defined) diaries”); (d) expressions of sentiments conscious of a relationship with the reader (“open diaries”). The four types were described bidimensionally as (a) a record of fact or an expression of sentiment, and (b) the authors' consciousness is either self‐oriented or reader‐oriented. Moreover, these dimensions are closely intertwined with utility and self‐consciousness.