Call them Internet exhibitionists and virtual voyeurs, but students are increasingly sharing their opinions through Web logs, better known as “blogs.”

Blogs are online journals that serve as personal diaries and forums for discussion. Students, teachers and Internet users alike use blogs as outlets to express opinions about everyday experiences and about academic, political and social subjects.

Classical studies junior Katie Jones said that blogs also help people stay connected with each other.

“Most of my friends from home are scattered all over the country, even the world, and we keep in touch by reading each other’s journals,” she said.

Jones said that blogging became a mainstream phenomenon around 2001.

“They’re kind of contagious,” she said. “You read one of your friend’s blogs that have cute pictures and mood icons, and you can’t help but want one.”

Loyola has its own blogging community at www.livejournal.com, a popular Web log site, similar to Movable Type and Blogger.

There are about 30 people connected to the university who post to the Loyola Live Journal page. Community member and music business senior Erin Rodgers said that many of the members from both the Loyola and New Orleans communities meet once a month at Rue de la Course on Magazine Street.

Though blogs are becoming increasingly popular, some users such as Jones are aware of its negative possibilities.

“A third party involved himself in my personal drama and posted a running commentary about it on his journal,” she said. “His action only augmented the real-life problem, and this almost caused me to delete my journal.”

Political science junior Karl Weis agreed that people who have blogs often use them in negative ways.

“I think it’s a horrible idea, because people end up posting private facts about others,” he said.

History junior Kaila Guillotte also said that blogs harmed more people than they helped.

“I think that private information should be kept at just that: private,” she said. “Private information shouldn’t be published. It can cause a lot of trouble between friends.”

Besides the occasional dispute, publishing private information in Web logs can have more serious consequences. Blogs are subject to possible copyright and libel violations.

According to Sherry Alexander, assistant professsor of commuications, there are only few notable legal cases concerning Web blogs. Though she said that she is not an expert on blog laws, she has taken a course on Internet law.

She said that when it comes to possible copyright violations, “as long as people publish the entire link, and they don’t alter the site’s content, they likely would not be found to infringe on other peoples’ copyright.”

Internet libel laws are currently unsettled. However, Internet users may be found in violation of libel laws in another country, without U.S. protection of the First Amendment, Alexander said. The Supreme Court has not yet dealt with any Internet libel cases.

Blog providers such as Live Journal prohibit users from misusing blogs.

Users must agree that they won’t “upload, post or otherwise transmit any content that is in LiveJournal.com’s opinion to be unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive to another’s privacy.”

Jones said that bloggers who feel offended by Internet comments should remind themselves that the Internet has different standards of communication than does face-to-face interaction.

“It’s a lot easier to be passive-aggressive and say inappropriate things on the Internet than to actually face reality. That goes along with the territory of blogging,” she said.