Another citation that might add to the discussion. Reference List Herring, Susan C. & Paolillo, John C. (2006, September). Gender and Genre Variation in Weblogs. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 10(4), 439-459. Retrieved February 7, 2007, from http://www.blogninja.com/jslx.pdf Abstract: A relationship among language, gender, and discourse genre has previously been observed in informal, spoken interaction and formal, written texts. This study investigates the language/gender/genre relationship in weblogs, a popular new mode of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Taking as the dependent variables stylistic features identified in machine learning research and popularized in a Web interface called the Gender Genie, a multivariate analysis was conducted of entries from random weblogs in a sample balanced for author gender and weblog sub-genre (diary or filter). The results show that the diary entries contained more 'female' stylistic features, and the filter entries more 'male' stylistic features, independent of author gender. These findings problematize the characterization of the stylistic features as gendered, and suggest a need for more fine-grained genre analysis in CMC research. At the same time, it is observed that conventional associations of gender with certain spoken and written genres are reproduced in weblogs, along with their societal valuations. Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN USA and IUPUC, Columbus IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com Quoting Jan Schmidt <aoir@schmidtmitdete.de>:
Hi Paul, hi all,
to add some empirical date to this interesting discussion: As others have pointed out already, women are not underrepresented in the blogosphere per se, but in the blogosphere that is most visible, that is the a-list and/or blogs which might be cited by journalists as "typical blogs". I've done some research on the German blogosphere which has a similar structure of attention/publicity as other blogospheres: There is a relatively small group of blogs that get a lot of visits/links (a-list), and the long tail which goes down to blogs with only a few, if any, readers. In a large-scale quantitative surveys I've conducted in 2005, there were about 45% women and 55% men among active bloggers; a content analysis done by colleagues of mine (who drew a random sample of german-speaking blogs) had even higher figures for female bloggers (about 65%).
We recently checked the german a-list by looking at the 180+ blogs which made the "Deutsche Blogcharts" in 2006 (http://www.deutscheblogcharts.de; a top 100 list based on Technorati-Data, i.e. measuring popularity through inbound links). Of those, 61 % are run by individual male bloggers, 13% by individual female bloggers, 23% are group blogs (of which, again, 25 percent are run by a group of men and 71 percent by a mixed-gender group); 3 percent didn't give any information on the gender of the author. So women are highly underrepresented in this highly visible segment of the german blogosphere.
We haven't looked in detail into the topics these top-blogs cover, but I'd say that a higher share of men than of women is blogging about topics that might attract more readers (e.g. IT, media, reflections on the state of the blogosphere itself, ...), thus giving these male blogs a higher visibility - and, subsequently, shaping the "public image" of blogs! The discourses about the potentials of blogs as well as banalization discourses both within and outside the blogosphere are implicitly gendered, I'd argue - see also the seminal Herring et al 2004 [http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html].
As a last remark: Interestingly we found in a study of a popular german-speaking blog hoster (www.twoday.net), that centrality WITHIN this particulaer platform blog community correlates with gender: Highly central blogs on the platform are more likely to be run by women, and they tend to be of an "public online-journal style" (rather than focussing on political commentary or filtering).
Right now, these findings have only been published in german - but in case you're interested in copies, just send me a private E-Mail.
Best, Jan
Has anyone on this list come across data or reflections on the apparent under-representation of women in the blogosphere?
paul teusner
fishers, surfers and casters - http://teusner.org/
bio - http://paulteusner.org/
-- Jan Schmidt Obere Sandstr. 9 96049 Bamberg
+49 (951) 500 9014 +49 (177) 520 5199
jan.schmidt@bnv-bamberg.de http://www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress
-- Jan Schmidt Obere Sandstr. 9 96049 Bamberg
+49 (951) 500 9014 +49 (177) 520 5199
jan.schmidt@bnv-bamberg.de http://www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress
_______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/