Hi, I'm also working on a project that requires a collection of genre-specific blogs, so I've been struggling with this issue for quite a while. So far I'm trying to appropriate some methods from ethnography and cyberethnography to guide me. I still work on the methodology, so I can't say whether it's successful or not. But for example, Marcus article about multi-sited ethnography was particularly insightful to think through these issues (Marcus, George E. "Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography." Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 95-117). There are other articles as well. Please ask your colleague to email me off-list if she is interested in exchanging references and ideas. I'd also be very curious to read what AoIR people think about this issue. Inna Kouper Doctoral student, School of Library and Information Science Indiana University