Why is the [political] blogosphere dominated by white males?
Finally someone from the mainstream media (Steven Levy) asks this obvious question. He gets part of the answer - bloggers tend to link to people like themselves - but tacitly assumes that there are a large number of (for example) black women blogging about the same kinds of things that the leading (white male) bloggers are and being excluded.
This misses the wider point that sociologists like Bourdieu have explored - that many people - particularly those of lower social status or women - may simply never think of political discussion as something ‘for them’ either because they don’t see politics as relevant to them or because they feel their opinions would not be listened to.
Needless to say this has touched off a lot of discussion including a spectacularly over the top and sociologically uninformed contribution from one A list blogger.
March 18th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
To be fair, it isn’t just blogging where white middle class males dominate. The editor of Cosmo points out that 80 per cent of twenty something readers say they may not vote. This skews politicians’ agendas towards those who do vote, like pensioners. Similarly, the blogosphere is skewed to often angry white males.
March 20th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
David,
I would really like to get some substance out of your “sociologically uninformed contribution” comment regarding Jarvis’ position.
Could you elaborate?
March 21st, 2005 at 5:30 pm
Without going into to much detail, Jeff makes a number of assertions based on classical liberal democratic thinking (that’s liberal democratic in the academic sense not the common language sense) that don’t take into account critical sociological thought:
1) “anyone can blog. Anyone. If you’re not white or not male or not American or not powerful or not rich or not anything, you can still blog.” - As long as you have Internet access of course. And have employment which gives you the spare time to do it. And have the free time to learn about it (only 38% of Americans even know what a blog is http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp).
2) “in the blogosphere, nobody knows you’re a dog… or unmale… or unwhite.” There is plenty of evidence around that people can often figure out what gender or even ethnicity you have from your writing style or interests - and if they don’t know they will often project the gender/ethnicity/class that they believe the author has.
3) “don’t judge the blogosphere only by 100 blogs on top of some list. That’s so old media. There are eight million blogs — and 7,999,900 of them that get more traffic and more links and more interest than those mere 100. Judge their diversity.” Inequality in traffic and attention is as important as inequality of opportunity of entering the field if you are talking about political blogs.
4) “if there aren’t enough unwhite and unmale bloggers blogging, am I supposed to stop?” No - and nobody suggested that he should.
I could go on but it’s time I did more work on my thesis!
March 22nd, 2005 at 11:31 am
David,
Thank you for your swift reply.
Having had the opportunity to read both Jeff’s thoughts and your own I would say the following:
1- Jeff seems to be caught in between his (I believe genuine) interest in diversity, and the global effects of such diversity; most of his generalisations on the blogosphere only take into account what happens in his own backyard, eventhough for argument’s sake some korean, iranian or somali bloggers might be mentioned. His is a concerned view of his own reality and no more than a tourist’s view of the diverse ‘other’.
In fairness, I do not think most of us can venture past that anyway. What I find a tad more problematic is when these geographical and culturally centred approaches become perceived as assertions on the whole.
2 - (Not knowing you, I might exagerate - please forgive me in advance!) Your comments seem to depart form a vision which still relies heavily on a structuralist framework. Its not so much what you say, but the underlying idea that seems to emerge. I gather from your writtings that people with low incomes, poorer education levels will never access these personal publication tools and will never use them in their favour. I do not believe it to be so. They might not use them as you do, but they will. In fact, they do already (just observe the success of the shared free internet access points in the poorest areas of Brasil, for instance; or look into the media education projects in spanish speaking south american countries promoted by Prof. Peres Tornero). The appeal of personal publication is as big for you and me as it is for a poor mozambican. Access (and basic starting notions) are the only problems. And those are not permanent.
One final reflection on the ‘personality’ evaluations of bloggers - the only thing that can surely be said about such a slippery subject is that individuals have the possibility to assume ‘otherness’, and a substancial number of them do so. Studies which are based on assumption are inherently flimsy.
I do however believe that this will remain one of the most problematic effects of personal publication.
March 22nd, 2005 at 1:38 pm
I am not a “pure” structuralist. I was just reacting to Jeff’s argument which attempts to deny the power of structure. One of my main research interests is the extent to which online self publication enables people to transcend the structures in which they are embedded. But you have to recognise the existence of those structures before you can examine liberatory potentials. I do disagree that access and “basic starting notions” are the only major barriers and I completely disagree that “basic starting notions” like “why would people be interested in what I have to say on the Internet” are a temporary problem (I draw on Bourdieu here). But I still think it is worth looking at whether weblogging is having some kind of emancipatory effect at the margins…
March 22nd, 2005 at 3:16 pm
I told you I might exagerate!
I probably did.
I agree with you entirely that we must be aware of the structures (although I tend to prefer a ‘far from ogre-like’ vision) before or in order to best evalute circunvention manouvres.
We will probably maintain our differences on the “why would people be interested in what I have to say on the Internet” for a while longer.
Note: Please forgive my spelling…I’ve been away from structured written english for some six years now…and things tend to slip away…
March 25th, 2005 at 10:27 am
Haven’t we been here before? Read accounts of the web in 1995, and the same themes emerge.
User profile : white, young, (angry), man, literate, time on their hands, high education, poltical interest, (libertarian) etc, etc, etc.
New media potential: distributed communication, social control, horizontal networking, peer-to-peer, end of communicaiton deference, soundig board, counter-publics, keeping elites to account, etc, etc, etc.
So, what’s new with blogging? Nothing that was new with the web in 1995, at least in theory.
Finally, about ease. Easy to have a blog? Possibly. Easy to use it effectively? Very, very time comsuming, even if you have the technical skill to tell you rss from your atom.