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.
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