Pew Report on Blogging
Pew Internet & American Life Project examines blogging in this report that’s been kicking around the blogosphere for a week.
I’m impressed with the presentation of the numbers–especially the sharing of data and trends from previous reports. Several of the numbers in the report surprise me: 62% of Internet users don’t know what weblogs are, only 5% of Internet users employ some kind of aggregation technology, and the number of blog readers has increased more than the number of bloggers recently. Bloggers covering politics attracted a number of Internet users to weblogs this past fall.
I don’t like how they framed the section “Blog creators are more likely to be” since, when taken at face value, several of the stats indicate that blog creators are not more likely to be what they listed. For example, if only thirty-nine percent have college or graduate degrees, that means 61% don’t. Sixty-one is significantly greater than 39, yet they’re trying to frame the numbers in a way that makes it seem like bloggers are more likely to have some kind of higher education. Maybe bloggers who are younger than 22, the typical age at which someone graduates college in America, account for a large chunk of that 61% and the researchers are taking them out of consideration. Since they don’t indicate what percentage of bloggers are in that group in this report, it’s difficult to know how those numbers impact the breakdown by education level. (Can you tell a big part of my job is analyzing numbers and statistics?)
(I also noticed a number of editorial errors in the report, but I’m not going to get into that now. We shouldn’t support and/or encourage sloppiness just because the information conveyed is important or novel. If this report was only a day old, the errors would be a bit more acceptable than in something that’s been getting lots of coverage for a week.)
Read it for content, but analyze the numbers and statistics carefully. Ignore the editorial errors. It contains interesting data.
It amazes me to think that fewer than 2,000 peope who own landline telephones across the country can give an accurate sample of Internet users. The art of sampling is perhaps something I’ll never really believe or trust.
According to a Pew report on the future of technology released Sunday, technology leaders suggest the Internet will have a big influence on the news and publishing industries. I’m afraid to read more of the 62-page .pdf because I don’t want to go on another rant about poor statistics and editorial quality. The technology trendsetters commented on things like network security, families, and health care.
(Thanks, DB, for nudging me to post about the blogging report!)
January 10th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
I’d assume the statistic around college graduates is a “more likely than the general population” type of thing. 39% college graduates is I believe a far higher percentage than the percentage of college grads in the general population. Of course, Pew could have actually said what they really meant. We have such a nice lovely language capable of so much precision but people so rarely fully use it.
January 10th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
ha ha ha! I’m going to steal your last line for a tagline because it’s so fab.
I hadn’t thought about Pew comparing bloggers to the general population. They don’t provide information about the general population for that kind of comparison, which would have been very helpful. Since they don’t say what they’re comparing the numbers to, I figured they were using the stats to make a profile for a typical blogger.