Simon Owens at Bloggasm recently conducted an admittedly unscientific but still very interesting poll on diversity in the blogosphere, going so far as to break it out into its separate niches, such as comics:
I emailed 1,000 (of which 302 responded) 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?
I sent these surveys out over a period of several weeks and waited for them to accumulate in my inbox. After I had a representative sample from each niche, I tallied the results and then added them up.
Here’s the breakdown of the overall blogosphere (i.e. the 302 people who responded to his survey):
Male: 69%
Female: 31%
***
White/Caucasian/European: 73%
Black/African: 9%
Asian: 10%
Middle Eastern/Arab: 1%
Latino/Hispanic: 6%
Native American: 1%
And here’s the comics blogosphere stats:
Male: 71%
Female: 29%
***
White/Caucasian/European: 85%
Black/African: 4%
Asian: 7%
Latino/Hispanic: 4%
He included comments from a blogger from each of the niche areas as well … comic blogger Alan David Doane had this to say:
The blogosphere, and especially the comics blogosphere, seems diverse to me, but I seek out as many opinions and angles as I can in my quest for a better understanding of the artform of comics. While owning a computer and an internet connection are, I suppose, barriers to complete freedom to blog, once you’re online the only determining factor to getting your voice consistently heard is what you have to say, and how well you say it. I don’t personally care what race, gender or sexual orientation you are — if you have something to teach me, I am willing to listen. I’d like to think quality writing is the great equalizer …
So, bloggers, what do you think?
September 23rd, 2006 at 6:16 am
I think the survey was probably sent mainly to political bloggers, so aside from Simon reproing a few comments you can’t break it down that easily into “political bloggers are this-and-this a mix, comics bloggers are this-and-this,” etc. – certainly not when you throw folks like me into the mix, as I specifically responded in this survey that I don’t fit one particular niche (political, comics, cats, NY, whatever-I-feel-like-blogging-about)…
September 23rd, 2006 at 12:05 pm
I think there is probably some validity to it, but (and I left a comment asking), I don’t see how he picked his random sampling. Until I know how random it was and how far-reaching, I don’t know how to judge the results.
I know any sampling I try if I’m going to send a questionnaire would be biased from the start because of where I’d get the sampling: my blogroll. Better would be to put a poll on my blog, but that would mean I’d get only my readers.
I’ve seen some decent polling MOs in which people get other people to blog about a survey and it spreads through the blogosphere. The questions are posted somewhere, lots of people link to it, and anyone who wants can respond. You’d need a control re: how many times someone can answer. Giving an email is good, but some folks have more than one addy, so results will likely also be biased. I haven’t figured out a way to do this informally without building in biases. I’d also want to add questions re: how many blogs and what age bracket the blogger falls into if I were to do a poll like that.
September 23rd, 2006 at 12:39 pm
I’d also have to see how he chose which bloggers to email. There are plenty of well-read bloggers out there who might not be included if they aren’t findable through the blogrolls of the better-known big-name bloggers.
Like Shelly said, this is an effort that might be better served by a poll somewhere with a link that people can easily forward and circulate among their friends.
September 23rd, 2006 at 6:25 pm
He e-mailed me, so he must have cast his net pretty far and wide. I gave him some pretty typical answers apparently. Except I added I thought the status quo of comic bloggers were “fat white guys”, rather than just “white guys”.