If I were a sociologist, I’d be studying the cultural differences in blogging behavior and attitudes. Every nation approaches blogging differently but I don’t think we know why. The Telegraph Media Group just conducted a survey across various countries and found, according to the Guardian (can’t find the story at the Telegraph):
According to the research, just 13% of those surveyed in Britain had read an individual’s blog in the past week, compared with 40% in the US, 25% in France and 12% in Denmark.Newspaper blogs were even less popular, the study of more than 9,000 readers of websites and newspapers found.
But keep in mind that there are also a lot fewer newspaper blogs than personal blogs, so I’d say these numbers are good for the papers.
Just 12% of UK readers had read a newspaper blog in the past week, compared with 24% in America, 10% in France and 9% in Denmark.And 95% of those surveyed in the US said they had used a website for news in the past week, compared with 89% in Britain, 81% in France and 78% in Denmark.
I believe that’s a much higher number than I’ve seen in other surveys. I’d like to see how they define news in the survey.
The lowest levels of response were for people who had actually written their own blog – 3% in Britain and Denmark, 7% in the US and 8% in France.“There’s a reserved nature in the British market when it comes to writing a blog,” said a source at the Telegraph Media Group, which commissioned the survey.
I’ve heard many theories about why people blog less in the UK. One theory in the UK is that there are already outlets of opinion in papers while in the U.S. we have our monolithic monopolies in most cities. Another is that we’re just different. We’re not reserved.
: A while back, Tim Dunlop speculates about the differences between the American and Australian blog worlds.
My guess for the UK is that there are a number of reasons. Firstly, the general population isn’t particularly technology focused, and we don’t applaud technology innovators as much as the US or Germany appear too. The impact is that new technologies aren’t discussed as much in the media or generally; there’s little in terms of a technology social group as compared to Silican Valley; and there isn’t any particular social cachet in using new technology: geeks never became cool over here
The tenor and tone of US politics seems to have driven a move by grass roots activists wanting to get their message out. From this side of the pond it looks like this drove discussion of blogs into the media – they were a source for interesting news. If you’ve got high emotions about something then the interactive elements (comments/track back) enable everyone to get involved. While there is a political divide in the UK, it’s no where as heated as in the US … and is mostly of interest to the chattering classes.
The UK media also does a reasonable job of representing the different perspectives in the population. If you’re left wing you read the Guardian, right wing The Telegraph, business The Financial Times. Not sure why this is different to anywhere else, but it seems to satisfy. And the BBC is by far the most popular online news source because it’s coverage is so good – they have good interactive elements so I wonder if that quenches the need as well.
When I’ve discussed blogs with technical users in the UK, they all tend to be reading them or aggregation sites such as slashdot/digg. But when you ask them about doing their own the reply always focuses on a perceived lack of content or a desire to remain private. As one colleague said to me ” who the hell wants to read that I did my laundry on Sunday and had a curry”.
[...] Buzz Machine [...]
Well, I’m one of the 3% of Danish bloggers.
I frequent about 3-5 (not much, to say the least) blogs run by Danes and most of them is in Danish. We are a few who write in English though.
But there is a strong focus on blogging within the student community and the more tech savvy companies. Rebecca Blood lectured at the IT University in Copenhagen a few months ago. I’m sure we will see more and more European blogs. Ducati started their own blog a while ago, and more will follow as people realize how easy it is to get started. But mostly when you ask people, not working within marketing or IT, about blogs they never heard of it.
Blogs here make up for a lot of distance that occurs among friends and family, imho. Going online to chat with likeminded people who tend to like to exchange ideas about politics, books, socializing, food and great places to visit, or just joke around, makes a really interesting passing of time when you’re not too busy. I talk much more with my family online than I ever did when it was letters or long distance calls, too. UK, like much of the Old World, doesn’t have family and friends so far apart.
[...] via Buzzmachine [...]
Jeff,
The key phrase you used was “I’d like to see how they define news in the survey”. The validity of surveys like this rely on such definitions, and their exclusion means that one cannot make up one’s own mind (I suspect this suited the Telegraph perfectly).
How many people do you think really know when they’ve “read an individual’s blog”? To most, it will be a web page they clicked on from Google – if they don’t know what a blog is, how do they know whether they’ve read one?
What people say they do and what they actually do are completely different things, which is why surveys designed to support the position of those who commission them tend to rely on the former.
[...] Another day, another survey Jeff Jarvis highlights yet another blogging survey, this time from the Telegraph Media Group in the UK.It’s another of those “the man in the street doesn’t read blogs” surveys, which remarkably also discover that professional news journalism isn’t in decline at all. Seems to me like the only ones predicting the demise of the mainstream media are themselves.As I said in Jeff’s comments, how many Internet users do you think actually know that the link they just clicked on from Google is called a blog? Not many, I would wager. So what exactly is the point of asking them whether they they’ve “read an individual’s blog in the last week”?If you’ve read this blog at all in the last year you’ll know that I’m a proud member of the survey cynics club – this is another example that will ensure I renew my annual subscription. Published 20 June 2006 15:59 by Niall Cook TrackBack URL for this post:http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/trackback.aspx?PostID=3538 [...]
It would be interesting to see how these percentages stack up with Japan, China, and especially Korea.
[...] Incidentally, the Telegraph’s Shane Richmond has commentary on a survey last month, but it doesn’t look to the the same as the one the Guardian reports about. And Jeff Jarvis raises some points about that Guardian-reported survey and how it was conducted. [...]
[...] I think my comments are sort of borne out by this recent survey of international blogging trends. (Thanks to Jeff Jarvis for the link.) [...]
[...] Jeff Jarvis over at the Buzz Machine highlights a study done by the Telegraph Media Group that looks at blog participation (reader and writership) across a variety of different countries. While most of the numbers match up somewhat with infromation passed on in Technorati’s most recent State of Blogosphere, I do have to wonder about what’s missing – while the data is presented as worldwide data, the information highlighed by Jeff indicates that it was more Eurocentric (with stats on the US, UK, Denmark and Germany) than worldwide (with the inclusion of some of the largest blogging communities in China and Japan. In any case, Jarvis notes that, “Every nation approaches blogging differently but I don’t think we know why,” and his discussion of the issue is something I’d love to see more of. [...]
I recently read that Blogging is more popular in France than in Germany, although there are more Germans than Frenchman.
However, the German Wikipedia is much bigger than the French one.
Therefore, one could conclude that Germans like neutral authoritative wikipedia work while the French prefer the opinionated blogging.
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