“Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet’s New Storytellers”

citation

Lenhart, Amanda, and Susannah
Fox. A Portrait of the Internet?s New Storytellers. Washington,
DC:Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2006. Pew Internet and American Life Project. 19
July 2006. Pew Charitable Trust. 28 Feb. 2007 <http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%202006.pdf>.

Click to access PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%202006.pdf

summary

This is a survey done by the Pew Charitable Trust Research people about the blogosphere. The surveyors randomly selected 7,012 Americans to find out how many were blogs users, and those that were (308) were questioned further on the phone. The small sample size is of great importance because it makes the number less reliable; however, this is the best survey I’ve found to date on blogging, so it will suffice. The article points out that most bloggers are young, diverse (racially and by gender), and that bloggers are quite internet-savvy and enjoy reading one another’s blogs.

quotes

Most bloggers do not think of what they do as journalism. 34% of bloggers consider their blog a form of journalism, and 65% of bloggers do not.

57% of bloggers include links to original sources either “sometimes” or “often.”
56% of bloggers spend extra time trying to verify facts they want to include in a post
either “sometimes” or “often.”

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).

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.

5% of bloggers blog under a pseudonym, and 46% blog under their own name.

52% of bloggers say they blog mostly for themselves, not for an audience. About
one-third of bloggers (32%) say they blog mostly for their audience.

95% of bloggers get news from the internet, compared with 73% of all internet users.

Community-focused blogging sites LiveJournal and MySpace top the list of blogging
sites used in our sample, together garnering close to a quarter (22%) of all bloggers.

38% of online teens read blogs.

Only 13% of bloggers post new material every day.

Nearly two-thirds of bloggers (64%) say they blog on a lot of different topics. The
remaining third (35%) say they focus on one topic.

the percentage of blog readers has increased to 39% of internet
users, or about 57 million American adults

Work colleagues, coworkers and bosses were another source of comment or recognition
of a blog (though whether the recognition was positive or negative was not asked), with a
bit more than a third (35%) of all bloggers hearing mention of their blog from this group.

Fully 87% of bloggers in our sample allow comments on their blogs; only 13% do not allow them.

Review/Analysis

One particularly interesting point that this survey made was that, although two thirds of bloggers do not view blogging as a form of journalism, many fact-check anyway. I think this greatly improves the credibility factor and proves that blogs can be just as reliable as a newspaper story. I believe that these bloggers fact check because they are passionate about their work and want everything to be correct.

Another interesting point was that 64% of bloggers don’t focus on one topic, yet I’ve heard from several sources that the best way to keep readers was to focus your blog on just one general topic. This to me says most bloggers don’t care about their audience, which is enforced by the stats in this article.

Bloggers are far more likely to read other blogs than non-bloggers, which I think shows some sense of community within the blogosphere. It’s like everyone is interested in one another, and they want everyone to succeed.

Intro to Blogging

citation

“Introduction to Blogging.” WordPress. Ed. Ryan Boren and Matt Mullenweg. 27 Feb. 2007. 28 Feb. 2007.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging#The_Difference_Between_a_Blog_and_CMS.3F

summary

WordPress gives those new to blogging what a blog is all about, in layman’s terms. This serves as a perfect place to start thinking about blogs because the concepts are fairly basic.

quotes

Generally speaking (though there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:
A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
An archive of older articles.
A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a “blogroll”.
One or more “feeds” like RSS, Atom or RDF files.

This ability to organize and present articles in a composed fashion is much of what makes blogging a popular personal publishing tool.

A better explanation is this:

Person A writes something on their blog.
Person B wants to comment on Person A’s blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog
Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A’s blog
Person A’s blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B’s post

The idea here is that more people are introduced to the conversation (both Person A’s and Person B’s readers can follow links to the other’s post), and that there is a level of authenticity to the trackback comments because they originated from another weblog. Unfortunately, there is no actual verification performed on the incoming trackback, and indeed they can even be faked.

Comments on blogs are often criticized as lacking authority, since anyone can post anything using any name they like: there’s no verification process to ensure that the person is who they claim to be.

Review/Analysis

This info page, although somewhat biased, provides a great introduction to blogging. It breaks down the confusing, computery parts of the blog that I had a harder time understanding. It explains that content and comments are basically the lifeblood of the blog. Without content, a blog is literally nothing. Comments are what feed bloggers and are part of why blogs are so popular and influential.

Archives seem to be really important to the blogging community, but I still can’t figure out why. To me, they just seem like the names of all your posts in chronological order. But, apparently, this is revolutionary.

Blogrolls provide a way to link your readers to other blogs you enjoy reading or that are related to your topic. Feeds and RSS provide a way for your readers to keep track of when you post new updates, so every time you update, they know. It gives the blogger incentive to post often, because the reader will return often.

Trackbacks are where one bloggers sees another blogger’s post, is interested enough to comment, so he takes the blog and posts a link to it on his own site, where he comments about it. This supposedly increases authenticity because readers can track both blogs. Pingbacks automatically send a pingback to the original blogger, who then goes to the second person’s blog to confirm that the pingback did, in fact, originate at the blogger’s site. *phew* that’s a mouthful.

Permalinks are another one of those things that seem fairly obvious to me, but are important to the blogging community. A permalink is the one where your blog or posts can be found. It’s a “pretty” permalink if it says something like “nickiblog.com/research/blog/intro” because then the user can see what it’s about in the URL, instead of something like “nickiblog.com/indexphp.234552=?”. Nobody knows what that means.

Lastly, the site gives some tips to bloggers just starting off. They recommend a blogger post useful/content-filled blogs often, stick to one topic, don’t put irritating banners or “vote me!” things all over your blog, and, above all, have fun blogging.

“It’s the Links, Stupid”

“It’s The Links, Stupid.” Economist 20 Apr. 2006. 25 Feb. 2007
.

(today’s date: 2/25/07)
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794172

summary
The Economist gives the 411 on blogs. Really, it’s just the basics, like why a blog’s style is so appealing and why reader/viewer comments are becoming essential to all sorts of media.

quotes

Today a new blog is created every second of every day, according to Technorati, a search engine for blogs, and the “blogosphere” is doubling in size every five months (see chart 1).

On average, Technorati tracks some 50,000 new posts an hour.

Some 60% of LiveJournal users are under 21 and female

only 1% of blogs are in German, according to Technorati, compared with 41% in Japanese, 28% in English and 14% in Chinese.

“Just as everybody has an e-mail account today, everybody will have a blog in five years,” says Mr Sabeer Bhatia

Review/Analysis

One especially helpful aspect of this article will be that it breaks down what amakes blogs, well, blogs. It breaks down the important components of a blog and explains what they are. Specifically, it explains blogrolls (other blogs the blogger reccommends), what’s in a post (text, hypertext, links, photos, videos), permalinks (the archive page at which you can find the blog), and trackbacks (these notify–ping–a blog about a new link from the outside; a “gossip-meter”). Dave Winer, who maintains the longest-running blog, says a certain appeal of blogs is that the writers are amateurs and don’t have to answer to editors, so their writing is often more raw and more “real.” This, in part, explains at least the initial popularity of blogs as a form of expressing oneself.

Six Apart is the company that runs LiveJournal, which is a bloggin site aimed specifically at the more personal, diary-type blogs. Mena Trott, who runs the company with her husband, says the wide teen usage is due to the fact that teens see email as a thing of the past, because why would you waste your time sending a thousand emails when you could just post it online? Or when you could just IM your friend instantly?

Conversations are key to blogs and are what’s drawing the attention of the older, more reluctant audience. Conversations are also key to a democratic society, as everyone deserves a voice. Blogs give people that voice, and they allow people to respond directly on an event. The popularity of blogs is proof in itself that, if you give people a voice, they will use it.

“Compose Yourself”

Citation
“Compose Yourself.” Economist 20 Apr. 2006. 27 Feb. 2007 .

date accessed: 2/27/07

and a direct link for ya:
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794240

Summary

“Citizen journalism” is on the rise and its credible, sources say. Now everyone can have “15 megs of fame.” Print newspapers are on the decline. They’re seeing the success of blogs and other amateur news sources and copying the most popular aspects of those, like feedback and comments on individual stories. However, their efforts have failed in some aspects.

Quotes 

“The more journalism the better; I don’t care who does it,” says Dan Gillmor.

In America, circulation has been gradually but steadily falling since 1990, according to Editor & Publisher, a trade journal. The trend in other countries is much the same. Most young people nowadays do not read a daily newspaper at all.

Their websites, Mr Murdoch said, “have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn’t send a letter to the editor any more. She goes online and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers.” Soon after this speech, Mr Murdoch bought MySpace, an online blogging and social-networking site wildly popular with young people.

“Just as more blogs will look like newspapers, more newspapers will have blog-like aspects,” says Paul Saffo at the Institute for the Future.

As The State of the News Media puts it, “the worry is not the wondrous addition of citizen media, but the decline of full-time, professional monitoring of powerful institutions.” That, after all, is what a free press in democracies is supposed to be for.

Reflections and Analysis

This article targets the newspaper aspect which I haven’t been able to find yet. I can use it in analyzing how the big-name newspapers, like the L.A. Time or New York Times, are coping with bloggers and the popularity of blogs. It starts off with the success of “Ohmy News,” a South Korean online newspaper composed of “citizen journalists,” who are just amatuers who write in about the news stories of the day. It’s credible because so many people log on and its readership is so large it competes with the big newspapers.

The popularity of sites like “Ohmy” are forcing newspapers to change their style by incorporating feedback sections on their sites online. Places like Yahoo! news are combining amateurs and professionals. For many, it seems like it doesn’t matter who the news comes from, but rather what the news is. News is news.

Newspapers are now losing advertisers because the advertisers don’t get as much money from an online ad as they do from a print ad, and because of sites like craigslist.com, the classified section is becoming obsolete.

However, there is still a debate about the credibility of all these bloggers. The decline of professional bloggers could, in its worst case-scenario, mean that the press stops being a check of the government and bigger institutions. This would mean the press is giving up its most important function.

Sina censors blogs

2/13/07

Citation 

MacKinnon, Rebecca. "Chinese lawyers protest blog censorship by Sina.com." Weblog entry. 12 Feb.

     2007. RConversation. 12 Mar. 2007 <http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/>. 

http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2007/02/chinese_lawyers.html

Summary

A popular Chinese blogger site, Sina.com, has begun censoring blogs without giving notice to the blogger and with no apparent reason. Posts are randomly deleted, as are comments. Some say that the comments are deleted so quickly that you can’t even copy what the post said after it was posted. After Sina deletes a post, bloggers report that it sends an email that says something like “We apologize for any inconvenience, but we had to delete you blog. If you have any questions, email us. We usually respond to emails within 24 hours.” While this may sound genuine, many bloggers doubt Sina’s sincerity when they say they’re sorry. Chinese lawyers are stepping in to defend the Sina.com bloggers, saying that Sina lacks business ethics and violates bloggers’ freedom of speech. While many blogger geeks admit that there are ways around this problem (i.e. creating their own sites, using other blogger services, etc.) it seems like this is more a matter of principle.

Quotes 

” While providing the space for our blogs, it [Sina.com] has also seriously violated our freedom of speech.”

Review/Analysis 

–these bloggers are making a big deal about being censored, and with reason. blogs are currently uncensored. newspaper articles, however, are censored, to a point. it seems to me that if bloggers want the same rights as journalists/reporters, they should be willing to abide by the same laws as reporters. this fiasco makes me think that bloggers will freak out if they’re censored, even just a little bit, maybe they aren’t ready for the full rights a journalist receives. Then again, these people are protesting the outright deletion of blogs by Sina.com, which is different than censorship. Maybe bloggers need editors, or the moderators of blogger sites can act as editors. Then again, what differentiates a blogger from a reporter at all?

I plan on using this article when I discuss how bloggers will be censored if they do receive rights, of if they should be censored at all. After reading this article, it seems to me that bloggers take a certain pride in being completely uncensored. I whole-heartedly agree with them; leave it to the newspapers to be censored by editors. Bloggers should have free reign. That is the niche they fill. I think that, if bloggers are not willing to abide by the same or similar rules that journalists do, they should not receive the same rights as journalists. I believe that part of the reason why reporters do have the various rights they have is because their stories get checked over multiple times so that the newspaper can be certain that there are no mistakes in the article. With an uncensored blog, however, a mistake can easily be overlooked and printed. This mistake, if presented as fact, will be taken as truth, which is false.

Just a few things I’ve noticed

I’ve just been browsing around a few blogs and I’ve noticed a couple things. Most of the blogs seem to be geared toward one interest group, like organic food lovers, punk music listeners, nerds who love the news, etc. I can’t make up my mind right now about if I like this or not. Part of me thinks it’s great because it allows all these people with similar interests to virtually get together around this blog and discuss matters that they’re interested in and probably experts on. On the other hand, these sources (blog writers) are obviously biased, then, and the readers only get the opinion they want to hear, so they may never get to hear the other side. Then again, below most all of these blogs is an area for comments where people get into heated debates about the topic, so I suppose that readers are getting to hear both sides of the story.

Another thing that caught my eye was that many bloggers tend to do their research by looking at leading newspapers’ articles and going from there, instead of doing research themselves. In this sense, a blogger is more like a columnist than a reporter, because he’s just reacting to the news, not reporting it.

Right now, I’m feeling that bloggers should not receive the same credentials as journalists for these couple reasons. Then again, I still have a lot of research to do. Next time I promise some actual research, not me just mouthing off.