In Case You Were Wondering About the Blogosphere and Diversity

Simon of Blogasm did a little unscientific survey, but it yielded some data worth scanning:

Premise: After reading a Newsweek article that discussed the lack of diversity in the blogosphere, I instantly became fascinated with the discussion of how the semi-anonymous blogosphere’s diversity compares to the diversity of traditional media. When talking about this Newsweek article, several bloggers pointed out that in many cases, you don’t know the race or gender of a blogger, which theoretically means that there is a somewhat-even playing field based on quality of content alone. But I was surprised that not much was done to actually chart the diversity of the blogosphere to create a frame of reference for these diversity dicussions to take place. So I set out to not only map the diversity of the blogosphere as a whole, but to also map diversity within individual niches.

Methods of experimentation: I emailed 1,000 different bloggers with a 4-question survey that enabled me to statistically chart the diversity of both gender and race within each niche. The 4 questions were:

1. What niche does your blog fall into (Examples: Political, gadget, movie, etc…If more than one, please list)?

2. What are the genders of all the bloggers who write for your site?

3. What are the races for all the bloggers who write for your site (if there are any that you’re not sure about, just indicate that you don’t know)?

4. What do you think of the diversity of the blogosphere, both in your niche and as a whole?

There’s more to read, but here’s where us MilBloggers fell out:

Military Blogs:

Male: 76%
Female: 24%
***
White/Caucasian/European: 100%

More grist for the mill….

Posted by xformed on September 19, 2006.

Categories: Blogging, Military

One Response

1. I was just thinking about this issue the other day. I like the fact that the blogosphere is largely anonymous. I know out of all the bloggers I read, I only know the race of a handful. For many of those bloggers the casual reader would never know their race without looking for it. I think race has absolutly ZERO to do with the quality of someone’s work and it’s a shame that so many institutions (my own included) track things like racial statistics in hiring. Not knowing most blogger’s racial makeup makes the blogosphere a truly colorblind society (for the most part.) I love the fact that no one knows that I’m Germaustralatviasiablackanese.

   by Station Commando on Sep 19, 2006 at 7:19 pm

About Chaotic Synaptic Activity

I’ve traveled extensively, both as a child and in my professional career. I have a global view of the world and the situations we currently face as a nation. Between some practical experiences, lots of reading and some time sitting in classrooms/lecture halls, I have opinions that I will share here.more →