men and their blogs
whatever, cjr. i realized this months ago. though this article is way more in-depth and brings up good points as to why there are few female political bloggers and why male blogs might attract more readers:
Blood, who has written a book about blogging, argues that for a weblog to attract a wide audience, it has to have a narrow focus, a formula that works against women bloggers."A lot of the women who have weblogs will post about a lot of different things," she says. "They generally won't focus only on politics. I think that writing style tends to strike people as more personal, even when it really isn't."
...Ana Marie Cox, a.k.a. Wonkette, acknowledges that she would have had a hard time breaking into the upper echelons of the blogosphere without the backing of British publisher Nick Denton (Gawker, Gizmodo, Fleshbot), who Sreenivasan refers to as "the New York Times Company of the blogosphere." "I was running my own personal blog for a while, and I like to think it was pretty good, but it didn't get anywhere near the attention Wonkette! gets," says Cox. She argues that there would be more female political bloggers if more women were led to believe that their opinions matter. "Vestiges of hundreds of years of gender stereotypes are still with us," she says. "Women get a different message from men about how to express their opinions. Women are not as encouraged to shout out their opinion. At times they're actively discouraged."
...Reynolds acknowledges that the differences between Martians and Venutians are deeply ingrained, without getting into whether they are culturally-mandated or intrinsic: "Men are programmed to show off to impress women and impress other men, and so blogs where you can be outspoken are naturally appealing to them -- although if anybody thinks blogs are impressing women," he adds, almost parenthetically, "they're in trouble."
"I think being one of the top bloggers requires some level of obsession," says Drum. "Women tend not to get quite so obsessed with things. (he obviously has not met me.) They tend to have more diverse interests."
what do you think? why are there more male political bloggers than females, and why do blogs run by men get more hits?
update: i realize that probably no one actually cares. i know i'm not like, furious about this disparity and i don't think it's the new glass ceiling. i just think it's interesting and would like to hear speculation.
Comments
well, first off I'd say that anyone who refers to men and women as "Martians and Venutians" is highly suspect.
That aside, I think he has a point about focused blogs being more likely to succeed. I think this is just because of how people have to marshal their limited time -- you're likely to pay attention to a given source of information on a regular basis if you can feel confident that its content will be of interest to you. Political blogs or narrowly defined blogs like wonkette, gizmodo, etc fall into this category.
If your information source's subject matter varies widely, then you're selling the author's consistent relevance, not that of the content. It becomes a matter of insight and innate talent, not just skill at information-gathering and synthesis. You know, blogger as artist and all that bullshit. You end up having to establish a cult of personality in order to succeed. Before he shut it down, Neal Pollack's blog got me to visit every day, but that's about the only one I can think of that meets this criteria. Obviously the odds of failure for a blog like this is a lot higher. I also think the immediacy, lack of revisions and volume of copy involved in the medium works against it as an art medium, making the narrow-focus blogs that much more likely to succeed.
I don't know that women are more likely to attempt the stream of consciousness, blogger-as-featured-attraction style, though. Maybe, but I don't buy the peacock-showing-his-feathers argument -- seems to me that guys showing off would try to display their proficiency as Renaissance men, not just by being prolific & obsessive.
Man, I'm really starting to hate the word blog. Don't get me started on "blogosphere". ugh.
i just think it's the nerd boy's way of finally becoming the most popular kid on the block. especially cause you can't see how nerdy he actually looks or speaks. nerd girls got over this complex in college and are now mature and articulate and capable, and realize that they don't need a cult following to validate their existence. but the nerd boy will always be insecure; for some reason, the nerd girl gets over it. except me. i'm still riddled with all sort of high school complexes. hence the obsession with obtaining readership on the blog.
blog blog blog blog blog. nyah.
i love my simplistic reasoning.
waah, at the end of the day, it's just a blog right? An online diary/thought journal for anyone. Perhaps I'm missing out on something big in the US, if many politicians are using blogs to voice their opinions, or use them to their advantage in their rallying or whatnot; over here, blogging isn't such a big deal. Or maybe just in my little corner or town. Certainly no-one I know (apart from myself) has a blog, let alone uses the internet for much more than internet shopping or downloading the odd mp3 or so.
Certainly I don't write anything of worth in my blog, which is why about five people know where it's hidden.
yes, I am proud of my all-over-the-place rants...because quite frankly, that is how I am in real life anyways.
oh wait. i don't have readership. haha
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