kishorebhargava

Blogs…You hear about them everywhere, everyone has a blog and yet we are not sure whether they really make an impact. Are blogs serious journalism, an alternative to newspapers and the press, a new age newspaper or just the personal rantings of a few people?

The Indian government asked the ISPs to ban several blog sites, this created a huge hue and cry amongst the online community in India. So much so that the next few days the media had nothing else to talk about. Everyone was talking about blogs. Only a very few actually talked about the censorship which in my opinion is a much bigger issue. I do not agree with censorship. I believe nobody has the right to block or control the websites that I visit. But coming back to the issue of blogs, what impact do they really have?

“There are lies, damn lies and statistics.”

This is a much used quote sometimes attributed to Mark Twain but originally Benjamin Disraeli describes the state of statistics very aptly. A recent study conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project will have you believe that blogs just don’t matter cause the numbers are way too low! A few abstracts from the report:

“54% of bloggers say they have never published their wiriting or media creations anywhere else.”
“54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.”
“54% of bloggers are men”

Okay the last item, I changed from the report just a little but, what the report said was a little more interesting, I just did not feel like breaking the lovely symmetry.

“Women and men have statistical parity in the blogosphere, with women representing 46% of bloggers and men 54%”

I’m not going to quote very much more from this report, it can easily be downloaded from the Pew website. But I do wish to make a few more points.

“11% of bloggers focus on politics and government; 7% focus on entertainment; 6% focus on sports; 5% focus on general news and current events; 5% focus on business; 4% on technology; 2% on religion, spirituality or faith”

Now the biggest problem with this whole report is i) it talks only of US bloggers and ii) despite the fact that even the US boasts of over 12 million bloggers the sample taken for the study is only 233 respondents! Now you tell me, isnt it all just statistics! Would love to see a similar report for a world-wide audience and also the Indian blogging scene.

Cheers…Kishore