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The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently published a survey of American bloggers, as is obvious from the quotes below there is not much that is surprising. What did catch my attention is the amount of bloggers amoung internet users: 8% and 39% read blogs, which probably means that the amount of people reading blogs that do not blog themselves are 31%. This is a quit impressive number, but then again, it is difficult to measure the impact of the blogsphere on civilsociety, democracy, the intellect of the public blah blah, from these numbers since most people are writing about their own life and alike. But one question remains though, what does this mean to the small circle of friends reading their friends blogs and writing themselves from their everyday life. This is probably where the biggest impact is.

Quotes:

Some 54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.
Eight percent of internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog. Thirty-nine percent of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs
……

The Pew Internet Project blogger survey finds that the American blogosphere is dominated by those who use their blogs as personal journals. Most bloggers do not think of what they do as journalism. Most bloggers say they cover a lot of different topics, but when asked to choose one main topic, 37% of bloggers cite “my life and experiences” as a primary topic of their blog. Politics and government ran a very distant second with 11% of bloggers citing those issues of public life as the main subject of their blog. Entertainment-related topics were the next most popular blog-type, with 7% of bloggers, followed by sports (6%), general news and current events (5%), business (5%), technology (4%), religion, spirituality or faith (2%), a specific hobby or a health problem or illness (each comprising 1% of bloggers). Other topics mentioned include opinions, volunteering, education, photography, causes and passions, and organizations.

………

The following demographic data comes from two surveys of internet users conducted in November-December 2005 and February-April 2006 (n=7,012).
The most distinguishing characteristic of bloggers is their youth. More than half (54%) of bloggers are under the age of 30. Like the internet population in general, however, bloggers are evenly divided between men and women, and more than half live in the suburbs. Another third live in urban areas and a scant 13% live in rural regions.

Another distinguishing characteristic is that bloggers are less likely to be white than the general internet population. Sixty percent of bloggers are white, 11% are African American, 19% are English-speaking Hispanic and 10% identify as some other race. By contrast, 74% of internet users are white, 9% are African American, 11% are English-speaking Hispanic and 6% identify as some other race.

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Originally uploaded by stilleben.

I have just been invited to give a talk at Aarhus publiclibrary on blogging/moblogging/puclicstorrytelling blah blah. They want the loaners to contribute stories and pictures to their webpage. Today I’ve been thinking of what to tell them, should I give them the usual postmarxian tale of how blogging will save the world and democratize media, enabling every ordinary man and woman to speak out – the typical speak on blogging from the internet subculture of blogging. Thinking of blogging as a subculture – which I think one should, this is not a mainstream medium – made me come up with the scenario that for blogging to become mainstream, everyone should make a blogpost as often as one makes a list of groceries to buy. If this really happens – the dream of the blogging community – I’m actually not sure that the hype around blogging would exist. The reason why people from the subculture promote this as much as they do is due to the fact that it is NOT a mainstream medium. If/when it becomes, they will go elsewhere…..