Last week, Steve and Allison sent me links to the latest Pew study before I had a chance to pop in my contacts. (Thanks, guys) I looked things over, but didn't comment on it, because we've got a few papers on blogging that need to be published first. I've been gagged.
Good thing that Dan Drezner trashed it for me. Dan writes,
The survey found that the overwhelming majority of people who blog do so for non-political reasons -- they function primarily as online personal diaries.This would certainly be earth-shattering news -- if it was four years ago.
Heh. Dan's got all the links. He also points out that this finding was waved around by journalists to show that bloggers aren't to be taken seriously by political and media elites. Dan has an excellent response.
I also have to wonder if these Pew researchers really read the blogs. One of the appeals of blogging is the mixture of the personal and the political. Blog readers like to know the people that they turn to for political commentary. Bloggers like the freedom to write about a wide range of topics. Most bloggers aren't entirely political or personal. They fall somewhere on a range between those two variables. Pew should have asked bloggers what percentage of their blog posts were political.