Mychal Davis

In social blogging, an individual creates a blog post and shares it with an audience, with the intention of beginning a discussion about the subject matter with readers—the members of the audience. This process is significant, because the resulting dialogue can be very different than a dialogue held face-to-face about the same subject. This method of online communication depends greatly on both the audience and the initial blogger’s willingness to be open and honest in their communication. Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher and theologian, developed an ethical approach called dialogic ethics, which examines the relationships between individuals, particularly two relationships he called the I-It and I-Thou relationships (Buber, 1923/1958).

An I-It relationship is a one-sided relationship in which there is little to no dialogue. In these relationships, there is often a lack of real depth in the communication, and whatever communication occurs can be manipulative or even false in nature, to benefit one member of the relationship (Buber, 1923/1958). In contrast, an I-Thou relationship is a two-sided relationship in which both participants strive to treat the other in the same manner that they wish to be treated. The communication in this type of relationship is a dialogue, with both individuals talking with one another to form an arena in which positive communication can occur (Buber, 1923/1958). To Buber, true dialogue is ethical communication because with dialogue, individuals are communicating with the sole objective of developing a mutual understanding of a subject and of one another as well (Buber, 1923/1958).

Dialogic ethics considers how the relationship that forms through dialogue can reflect an individual’s desire to be an ethical communicator. Dialogue allows individuals to speak openly and honestly, while steering communication away from extreme perspectives and communication methods. Through self-disclosure in dialogue, people are able to form a relationship based on a mutual understanding of a situation, by staying true to one’s own self while remaining open to another person simultaneously (Buber, 1923/1958). So, dialogue—and in turn dialogic ethics—represents the objective of health communication on social blogging websites. Individuals who are complete strangers come together on the social blogging sites in order to form relationships with other people with whom they can have conversations—dialogue—about the subjects that matter to them. Understanding more about how women use social blogging to communicate about their health will result in a better understanding of the ways ethical communication occurs within online social blogging communities.