Address Terms in Japanese Blogs as a Response to the Author's Self-Presentation

In recent years, internet blogs have quickly gained popularity as a medium. The communication that takes place on a blog follows different patterns than face-to-face conversation, but has not been studied as extensively. An author of a blog can selectively disclose personal information and describe events from everyday life, thus creating a self-image for public view. This paper analyzes the manner of self-presentation on four blogs written by Japanese celebrities and the way readers of the blogs respond to this self-presentation by choosing certain terms of address when referring to the celebrity in their comments. Even when relevant parameters such as the gender and the age of the celebrity are similar or identical, some important differences in the patterns of address can be observed. It can be concluded that the addressed person's manner of self-presentation is an additional important factor.