Answer: They are both dominated at the top by white men. That fact, which seems obvious when one thinks about it, is one of the reasons that this blog got started. Just think back to the bloggers who were (or weren’t) invited to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Newsweek expounds:
At a recent Harvard conference on bloggers and the media, the most pungent statement came from cyberspace. Rebecca MacKinnon, writing about the conference as it happened, got a response on the “comments” space of her blog from someone concerned that if the voices of bloggers overwhelm those of traditional media, “we will throw out some of the best … journalism of the 21st century.” The comment was from Keith Jenkins, an African-American blogger who is also an editor at The Washington Post Magazine [a sister publication of NEWSWEEK]. “It has taken ‘mainstream media’ a very long time to get to [the] point of inclusion,” Jenkins wrote. “My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere … will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one.”
But WHY? The Blogosphere at face would seem to be the ideal example of a meritocracy. If your writing sucks you’ll get no readers. If you don’t like what someone writes then either move on or start your own blog. THIS blog exploited the fact that there weren’t many South Asian American blogs providing YOU with what YOU wanted to read.
So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: “It’s white people linking to other white people!” (A link from a popular blog is this medium’s equivalent to a Super Bowl ad.) Suitt attributes her own high status in the blogging world to her conscious decision to “promote myself among those on the A list.”
The top-down mainstream media have to some degree found the will and the means to administer such care. But is there a way to promote diversity online, given the built-in decentralization of the blog world? Jenkins, whose comment started the discussion, says that any approach is fine—except inaction. “You can’t wait for it to just happen,” he says. Appropriately enough, the best ideas rely on individual choices. MacKinnon is involved in a project called Global Voices, to highlight bloggers from around the world. And at the Harvard conference, Suitt challenged people to each find 10 bloggers who weren’t male, white or English-speaking—and link to them. “Don’t you think,” she says, “that out of 8 million blogs, there could be 50 new voices worth hearing?” Definitely. Now let’s see if the blogosphere can self-organize itself to find them.
I don’t completely agree with Suitt’s rationale. I think the dominance of white male bloggers has more to do with like-minded people linking to like-minded people: the echo chamber effect (and the reason that most blogs provide such hollow arguments). It just so happens that often times white men think like other white men, just as men of other races may think of certain issues in the same perspective. The other fact is that minorities (in this country) have less access to the internet than whites, and so it’s not entirely surprising that you see more white bloggers at the top. As for the lack of women bloggers at the top, I have no clue. Except for the tabloidish reporting of Gawker and Wonkette, there seems to be a vacuum. I figured that this would be an issue which would invoke a few cents from a large number of readers.
Abhi, it’s the same reason that I will never be a CEO ….time to start wearing lifts I guess…
But WHY? The Blogosphere at face would seem to be the ideal example of a meritocracy.
Maybe because there are a lot of meritorious white guys? As for the minority stuff, Indians and Chinese have more wealth than whites on average and more web access. I see no dearth of Chinese or Indian blogs.
And there are tons of women bloggers. Look at Livejournal or something. They just talk about their hair and their friends rather than the OUTRAGE of the day perpetrated by Bush/Michael Moore/etc. Both are pointless if you really think about it. At least the women talk about something they have some control over.
Women just tend to have different interests than men, and are less interested in politics, computers, websurfing, pointless arguing, etc. Multiply all those factors and you have the blogosphere.
Diversity is fine and good, but in the absence of any real or disparate impact of discrimination, this obsession with diversity is unhealthty.
maybe it is just that the women and minorities have better things to do in life than sit in parents’ basement and blog all day….
/ducking and running //kidding!!! i’m implicated in this too (as a girl blogger who talks about her friends and taking apart the occasional computer)
Not necessarily. Being popular and widely read on the web has as much to do with who you know and how you market yourself as how well you write. I know of a lot of not-so-good writers who have huge reader bases because they’re friends with so-called ‘a-listers’, have put their name out on a billion lists, or write about niche topics (asbestos, anyone?). I also know of a lot of folks who don’t market themselves or know anyone but write better than most published authors.
Sure, the web is more merit-based than say, corporate america, but it’s still got that pesky human nature to deal with.
On a related note, see Maureen Dowd’s column this week on the dearth of female op-ed columnists. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/opinion/13dowd.html?ex=1110949200&en=c5f6037a134e0f27&ei=5070
Present company excluded, of course. This site is all merit.:)
I think part of it is sadly most of us are attuned to the world-view of white men; we like and enjoy reading things from that perspective. Its comfortable. Even when we could theoritcally move away from it, many of us don’t.
Also, cross-cultural understanding is not easy in this culture. I might be South Asian, but am I more aware of the white-male world-view than the Latino Tejano world-view? Thats a good possibility
I don’t trust Dave Pollard’s statistics entirely, and I don’t think very highly of the assumptions behind the Newsweek article. For one thing, they seem to be derived mainly from analysis of Technorati and Blogstreet, both of which are somewhat unreliable at times.
I’m also skeptical about how good Technorati and Blogstreet are at tracking blog stats in non-European languages. Are they really comprehensively indexing Japan? Korea? Taiwan? Singapore?
Even if we go with his figures, I think some of the details of the statistics need to be kept in mind. Note, for instance, that visitors to the ‘A list’ blogs tend to stick around for shorter periods of time than visitors to ‘B’ and ‘C’ list blogs. The quality of the interaction is lower, and generally weaker. How does one compare a blogger who has fewer readers, but influences her/his readers a lot to a blogger who operates on the reverse principle?
The long and short of it is, I don’t really accept that hitcount should be the sole factor considered in counting “A list” or “top” bloggers. We might also look at: citations in the MSM, and density or originality of information/content, to name just two. It all might look very different if we considered other factors.
Yep, the long tail and micropublishing argue that Newsweek is just repeating the usual bullshit of recasting blogs as Good Morning America.
Okay, but nobody seems to want to address the gorilla in the room. Why are there so few women at the top of the blogosphere when it comes to writing about news/issues/politcs (unless you disagree with that statement also)? I don’t agree that women are more interested in writing about “their friends” or “don’t like politics.” My favorite Post writer for example is Dana Priest. I don’t buy the minority argument entirely either, but I do tend to see the Newsweek article’s point when it comes to women bloggers.
Oh god no! No useless Diversity Task Force for the blogosphere. While my blog doesn’t enjoy a high readership level, I am glad that my perspective is out there should people choose to read and respond to it. Let’s not corporatize a truly democratic medium with the creation of inadequate Value Criteria and, hence, power cliques, &c. The beauty of blogs are their organic nature; they offer great new avenues of expression and communication devoid of pigeonholes, while sourcing so many topics, genres and arts.
Few other factors to consider before premature evaluation of a blog:
You’re reading it, so the joke’s on you. Besides, what about us women who talk about our hair, our friends and science and politics? Are you going to dismiss our sites as useless because they don’t get to your topic before a good discussion on the benefits of hot oil treatments?
Oh, I almost forgot …
Can’t apply this to women so much, but here’s a good article on why it is important to blog if you are black.
My question: How will low-income minorities/Americans gain access to the technology required to blog?
thanks for the article
I think the reason there are so few “at the top” of web writing could be the same reason that women are so under-represented in major print publications. From the Washington Post last week:
What is so special about the web that would make you think that it would be immune to the same patterns?
My question: How will low-income minorities/Americans gain access to the technology required to blog?
christ, when was the last time you were at a public library? there are a crap load of bums looking at porn on the public terminals. even if the terminals have a 30 minute limit, if you’re poor, you shouldn’t be spending all your time blogging, or you’ll stay poor 😉
btw, i was one of those morons who linked to the “the libertarian girl”, i don’t buy this crap about silenced voices and shit.
here is how i link
1) if someone emails me and begs me a link, i usually link (i don’t get that many emails anymore).
2) see someone in the referral logs, seem OK.
3) similar topic.
if there is a black female lesbian bioscience/libertarian politics/history buff bloggers out ther of marginal writing ability, i promise i will link to them five times on my blogroll!
since my site is getting about 3100 unique users per day (mostly through google referrers and regular visitors-NOT referrals from other blogs), that’s nothing sneeze at.
and to be honest, speaking as a brown atheist libertarianish heterosexual kerry voter (to use the modifiers so beloved of identity politics types) i am really starting to consider switching back to republican registration and putting on my paleface paint so i can be an angry white male and sneer at all the whining about non-recognition in the blogosphere. use the fucking master’s tools to tear down the master’s house for once!
(hell, the master invented computers, so if you have such an aversion to mostly patriarchal and mostly white inventions, well, get off the internet)
[GC impersonation signing out]
I heard a black man was part of the team that made the internet, and I’ve heard rumors of alot of asian scientists…dunno if thats true or not
finally, check out my blog’s referrals. or futurepundit’s referrals. you don’t need “A list” links to get a lot of traffic if you don’t spend all your time talking about politics…which is…guess what…dominated by white men!
i believe i used the term mostlydefinition.
the definition.
same story with sepia’s referrals. you don’t need the white powerstructure’s leavings if you have google on your side.
“Women just tend to have different interests than men, and are less interested in politics, computers, websurfing, pointless arguing, etc.”
Speak for yourself,sknathon. There some of us whos lives don’t revolve around hair and fashion and are interested in the ‘real world’and matters that affect our lives.I for one don’t want to be a dumb blonde, thank you very much!!
Speak for yourself,sknathon. There some of us whos lives don’t revolve around hair and fashion and are interested in the ‘real world’and matters that affect our lives.I for one don’t want to be a dumb blonde, thank you very much!!
if a guy said that, he might be accused for being patronizing or patrocentric in values. now, i’m not into my hair, fashion and all that shit, but it isn’t intrinsically less inferior. that’s the problem i have with all this crap about not enough “top female bloggers,” since top ~ political. if we want equal female (or minority) representation in that sort of crap, should we try to get more men into livejournal and talking about their personal life?
to each his own.
btw, from personal experience, there is an easy way to get google traffic: load up some images of hot hollywood chicks. for a while 1/3 of my hits were for kate beckinsale and keira knightley. of course, that implies that want that sort of traffic (since most bloggers spend money on their hobby, rather than making money).
instrinsically inferior, i meant. that’s the “secret” to lots of traffic, bad grammar!
Let me make an analogy to try and clarify what is being said here so that I understand correctly. Hotweels cars and barbie dolls. We grow up expecting that men should play with the cars and the women with the Barbie’s (although my first toy ever was a naked Barbie, but that is besides the point). What we seem to be saying here is that the vast majority of female bloggers want to talk about their friends and their hair on their blogs, and that’s why we don’t see any female bloggers amongst the “A-list” of News/Political/Issues blogs. There just aren’t enough of them doing it to have one break through the “blogosphere ceiling.” Is this assessment of the various comments above correct? Dooce.com for example is as “A-list” a woman blogger as they come, but she does in fact write about personal/emotional issues. That brings me back to my analogy in the form of what may just be a rhetorical question. Are heavy, issue oriented, political blogs Hotwheels and Live Journals Barbies?
on the truth laid bear rankings wonkette is #9 and michelle malkin is #11. if female bloggers want to get that high, well, they should start talking about that crap. frankly, i’d rather read about someone’s sex life than the latest navel gazing on who wolf blitzer flirted with on his show last night….
I think the gender disparity is puzzling and worth looking into, but all the other distinctions (race, class, nationality, immigration status) are in my opinion coming from disparities in the outside world. Blogging takes time, resources, equipment, education (whether formal or informal, in writing, computer, or marketing skills or both), and the belief that your opinion actually matters, even if the face of your actual traffic statistics 🙂
the thing i find more interesting than all this is how the blogosphere is actually organized–i mean it’s clearly not one thing. i’d love to see a social networking graph to see how much overlap there is by, say, the White Liberal -daily kosish blogosphere and the conservative Michelle Malkinish blogosphere.
“christ, when was the last time you were at a public library? there are a crap load of bums looking at porn on the public terminals. even if the terminals have a 30 minute limit, if you’re poor, you shouldn’t be spending all your time blogging, or you’ll stay poor”
Point understood, but not accepted. Not everyone who’s “poor” lives near a public library and although I’m not sure what the answer is to Maitri’s question, I don’t think it should be dismissed so quickly.
And, I disagree with what you say about the poor and blogging because for as much as blogs are not a meritocracy, they are an environment in which thoughts can be expressed with relative anonymity thereby allowing unrestricted participation, regardless of whether you’re a libertarian, Barbie, bum… Blogs are a good, albeit disembodied, training ground for language, conversational logic and depending on where one is, critical thinking. Much better than just using the Internet to find a job at Starbucks or taking an online English class.
Abhi,
Obviously, you haven’t been following the resounding slap that Kevin Drum received when he asked the very same question. Yes, the short answer is that there are zillions of female bloggers out there, if you care to look around and choose to link to them.
And, I disagree with what you say about the poor and blogging because for as much as blogs are not a meritocracy, they are an environment in which thoughts can be expressed with relative anonymity thereby allowing unrestricted participation, regardless of whether you’re a libertarian, Barbie, bum… Blogs are a good, albeit disembodied, training ground for language, conversational logic and depending on where one is, critical thinking. Much better than just using the Internet to find a job at Starbucks or taking an online English class.
hm. let me add something else: many of the poor are not going to be the types who are going to put together thoughtful essays or snarky comments & analysis about the world from their perspective. the underrepresentation of the poor is not simply a function of the lack of technology, for whatever reason, they are more likely to be less coherent, literate, articulate and eurdite in the conventional literate format and less likely to have an audience with whom they can connect. progressive magazines could hire a bunch of poor americans to write about their perspective, or “street news,” which homeless people sell in many major cities, could take off. these things don’t happen. i don’t think the blogosphere is going to change that. many non-poor liberal americans are concerned about the poor of course, and want to know about them, but they would prefer to read what another affluent non-poor citizen of american says and reports about the poor than first person narratives.
So glad someone followed the logic from technology access to education, or the lack thereof. Now, how will education and resultant awareness take off if a society is not aware that it is a problem? Blogs are great awareness builders – you hear about topics and from sources other than the status quo.
Great, we are now aware, but do we care? The concern associated with making education a priority issue is missing. A blog is an optimal communication tool to foment concern.
In the end, my/the hope is that people don’t feel that they have fulfilled their social obligations merely by being active on a blog, but that they use it as a tool to raise awareness so we can all go out and DO. IMHO, too many bloggers use this medium as a socio-political end rather than a means to an end.
with respect to the poor, the poor don’t blog because they’re a) poor and b) usually dumb [or “differently abled”]. Joe construction worker is not Joe doctor. Joe construction worker wants to drink a Bud and watch the Jets on TV.
as for the idea that barbie and so on are impositions of the white patriarchy, you guys need to see what the israelis tried in their kibbutzes. They tried to reprogram gender, etc. and make women into laborers and men into daddy daycare types.
didn’t stick. dozens of kibbutzes independently reverted to genotype. i can’t believe that people here have such a problem with the idea that men and women have different interests, likes, dislikes, abilities, etc. Different is not superior/inferior. Talking about Bush ad nauseum is pretty pointless, as is talking about Tom Cruise’s new girlfriend. Men are just more likely to pursue the former kind of pointlessness. You can deny this in a blog comment, but that makes it no less true in the real world.
God in Heaven.
Please show me the data that says most blogs are written by men. It depends on the ‘census’ or method that you look at. Really! Show me the links.
My good friend Lisa Williams, who blogs at Cadence90 and is a Berkman crew member along with yours truly (she was responsible for that how to pod-cast thing everyone linked to – and yes, yes, when I’ve got more time I’ll find the links), says that the two largest surveys show slightly more women blogging.
Sheesh.
MD, Just to clarify I don’t think anyone has made the assertion that there are more blogs by men than by women. If I were to lay bets even without seeing the data I would place my bets on the assumption that there are more women bloggers than men. The question here has to do simply with the content of those blogs.
Nitin, Thanks for the link to the Kevin Drum drubbing.
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Slate on the dearth of female op-ed writers.
-D