Webliminalblog

Blogosphere demographics

A friend & colleague at Mary Washington sent me an email today that asked about the demographics of the blogosphere. It contained the following quote:

" ... referred me to an article stating that bloggers are overwhelmingly white and male and implied that therefore one needs to be careful about assigning students to read blogs."

I was astounded to read that part about being careful about assigning students to read blogs, because of the possible majority position of the authors. I guess I missed a lot these past few years. If it were true, that the majority were written by white males, would that really be a problem? Can't people select the opinions they agree with? Can't teachers select a collection of readings that present a balanced viewpoint?

In any case, the majority of reports on blog writers state that a slim majority of the authors are male. There was one report in March that said that a large majority of bloggers are white males, but it seems this is a self-selecting/self-reporting survey of political blogs. Results from a self-reporting/ self-selecting survey of blog readers/writers with a political slant by Chris Bowers - March 22, 2005. All the reports I could find were about blogs primarily in the U.S.

Here are the others I read:

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Blogosphere - January 2005

The Blogging Geyser seems top be the most recent and pertinent part of Blog Studies by Perseus. - April 2005

God -blog Demographics 2005 Part 1 - a report on blogs of people with that special connection.

1571

Posted by ernie at June 20, 2005 02:52 PM