Blog Demographics

Doing more work revising my book manuscript today. I've incorporated some recent findings by the Pew Internet & American Life Project which Steve Jones pointed out to me - in fact, they just released a new update on blogging (in the U.S.) a few days ago...

The State of Blogging shows a 57% increase in blog readership over the course of 2004; at the same time, they also found that

for all the excitement about blogs and the media coverage of them, blogs have not yet become recognized by a majority of internet users. Only 38% of all internet users know what a blog is. The rest are not sure what the term ‘blog’ means.

(I'd suggest that while many users in that rest may have visited blogs, they have regarded them as online diaries, community fora, or news Websites rather than as blogs.)

An earlier report, Content Creation Online, also has some interesting data.

And I've also incorporated some more of John Hartley's work on redaction, which he pointed out to me after reading the manuscript - especially

John Hartley. (2003) A Short History of Cultural Studies. London: Sage Publications, pp 82-7.
---. (2004) "The 'Value Chain of Meaning' and the New Economy." International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7:1, 129-41.
---. (2000) "Communicational Democracy in a Redactional Society: The Future of Journalism Studies." Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism, 1 (1), 39-47.