[Air-l] women bloggers - data

[Lois Ann Scheidt]

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 at 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 at 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 at bnv-bamberg.de
> http://www.bamberg-gewinnt.de/wordpress
>
>
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