Canadian Bloggers: Young, Male, Educated, Anglo - and Conservative?
Some time ago I wrote a post partly in response to a comment from a fellow YULBlogger, who noted how ‘anglo’ the group listing seemed to be. Where were the Francophone bloggers, she wondered? Was this some sort of vindication of the theory that Montreal was not really “Québecois?”
My answer was more about the latter, but on re-examining the issue, the question remains; are there actually fewer French bloggers than English in Quebec?
The question is frustrating because there’s almost no well-compiled statistics about Canadian bloggers.
Blogger and graduate student Aaron Braaten compiled an informal survey last year to try to remedy the situation. You can download the entire survey there in PDF format.
There are some interesting assertions made from a sampling of about 1150 responses: Nearly 80% of blog readers don’t click on ads in blogs (yup). Most don’t use RSS readers (interesting.) Quebec was under-represented in the survey - which he takes to mean that there are fewer Quebec bloggers in general. His general stats puts the average Canadian blogger as male, 30ish, university educated, urban, and supporting the Conservatives (with NDP the close 2nd).
That said, there are some real statistical issues with the sampling. The list of the blogs he gives thanks to in the credits are pretty much a) conservative and b) part of self-linking communities of conservative blogs, so I would expect people who found out about the survey from them to be of a similar persuasion. Literally none of the blogs listed were French, and none of the English ones were from Quebec (at least that I could recognize.) I don’t think the survey was translated into French at any point, so (following the old viral/memetic vector model) it never jumped the gap between the English and French Canadian blogospheres to any great degree. It’s perhaps worth translating and pinging to the Quebec blogger community, to see how those stats reflect the province, and perhaps change the weighting of the national survey.
These issues also relate to the closed-community “echo chamber” effect of blogging; links tend to be to other people with the same politics, persuasions, musical taste, and mother tongue as yourself. It’s not surprising, then, that the survey didn’t reach Quebec to any great degree - it certainly wasn’t on the radar of the YULBloggers I read on a daily basis - because Quebecers in general are more small-l liberal or social-democratic in their outlook - certainly the YULBloggers I’ve met, anyway.
Looking at the YULBlog member rolls, it doesn’t seem that English dominates - it seems evenly split 50-50. That in and of itself is interesting because anglophones represent 10% of the population of Quebec at most, and even if they’re concentrated in the Montreal region, it would seem that they’re blogging disproportionately more than franco Quebecers.
There’s a couple of factors to consider here.
1. Most of the original group from back in 2000 were Anglos or writing in English, so their blogs and meetups probably attracted other anglo bloggers before franco bloggers.
2. Blogging started out more-or-less as an Anglospheric phenomenon and the nascent blogging industry is pretty American
3. It is the “default language of commerce” at least until the balance of power shifts elsewhere, so if you want a broad North American readership, English is a strong contender.
4. We do have two English universities here and blogging is a 20-30something activity at the moment.
5. There’s a not insignificant English-speaking minority which is tight-knit, and blogging is definitely a “joiner” activity for new Anglo arrivals.
6. Relating to (3) above, a lot of blogs are topic-specific, so given a relatively small population and then even smaller subset of blogs on your topic likely to come from Quebec, you’ll be linking to English blogs at some point and if you work in the field, possibly writing in English too, even if your mother tongue is French.
Your observations?
January 30, 2006 12:22 AM
Comments
It sounds like the survey is a bunch of crap.
One observation: “Nearly 80% of blog readers don’t click on ads in blogs.” You seem to feel that’s to be expected and that perhaps people expected it to be higher. Turn it around: “20% of blog readers DO click on ads.” That’s about ten times higher than I would have expected!
wrote Blork on January 30, 2006 10:50 AM
Hmm, anyone know if 20% clickthrough rate is acceptable?
I think the survey isn’t crap, it just isn’t extensive or scientific. That said, the idea is good. Maybe we need to do a YULBlog state-of-the-union survey of our own? Or should we wait for Michael Adams to do it and charge us $10k to look at the results? ;)
wrote AJ Kandy on January 30, 2006 11:46 AM
I don’t know about “acceptable” or not, but when you consider that blogging is, primarily, a communication medium, not an advertising medium, then I would think that having 20% of readers click through an ad is pretty darn high. Many people look at 50 or even 100 blogs a day, but do you really think they’ll click ads on ten or 20 of those blogs, every day?
Personally (with one exception that I won’t get into), I click on a blog ad maybe once a month. So that’s in the range of .1% (that’s POINT-one percent). I don’t think that’s unusual.
wrote blork on January 30, 2006 3:22 PM
A survey like this just shows me who the most vocal of bloggers are than any real sample of what it’s like being a blogger in Canada.
In previous surveys I’ve seen (and some personal observation), the majority of bloggers tend to be female, and getting younger. However, how many teen personal bloggers are going to even have access or want to fill out such a survey?
Technorati estimates that 80,000 new blogs are created every day. So it’d be interesting to see the stats Technorati has on demographics per country.
wrote Lea on January 30, 2006 4:59 PM
Aaron, thanks for your clarification. Sorry it didn’t post immediately. Yes, it does seem to be a limited survey; would you mind if we translated it and reposted both versions? Arguably, we might get a better sampling of Quebec blogs, at least.
wrote AJ Kandy on January 30, 2006 5:07 PM
In usual Montreal fashion, I wonder how many of these blogs are bilingual? I’ve run into quite a few in both languages.
wrote Warren Wilansky on February 1, 2006 9:30 PM
Hm, Warren, that’s a good point. How do you count bilingual blogs (or the many blogs written by francophones, but in English)?
wrote AJ Kandy on February 5, 2006 1:37 PM
Your guess is as good as mine for how to count bilingual blogs. Since it’s somewhat editorial it’s hard. Does it have to be 50/50%? Read and commented in both languages? About both languages?
A tough one.
wrote Warren Wilansky on February 7, 2006 8:45 PM
Interesting post. As I was reading it each of the factors at the end popped up as explanations. But #5 has been a pleasant bonus for me as a recent arrival. Blogging is a nice daily retreat from a day living in French.
wrote Frank on February 24, 2006 1:06 PM
In the survey results themselves, I specified that this is limited to anglo bloggers.
It is not a random sample because of self-selection bias. There’s no way of knowing who failed to take the survey. It’s entirely limited by my linguistic limits. I, personally, am not bilingual, and I believe I specified that this cannot be truly considered as a genuinely ‘Canadian’ survey
If anything, the survey reflects the failures of bilingualism. It still has a long way to go.
However, I did give notice to members of the Lib Bloggers, Blogging Tories, Prog Bloggers as well as Lib Blogs, which means that, as far as political stratifications go, I opened it up along the usual party lines.
What you may find interesting is the stats on who would have voted for the Bloc, as they were likely anglo or at least bilingual. My stats on Quebec, while limited, may serve to reflect anglo political sentiments.
Nevertheless, while the survey may not be random, it seems to be representative. The Conservatives did pick up seats, and the NDP appears to be a more crdible alternative. The voting behaviours in the 2006 election reflected this fact. Furthermore, when you filter out the redundancies in the blogrolls for NDP, LIB and Progressives, there are marginally more right wing bloggers _who are members of an identifiable blogroll_ in Canada than there are leftist or liberal/progressive blogs.
Blogs are Do It Yourself media, and plenty of Conservatives choose to blog, as this reflects their perception of a liberal media bias.
wrote Aaron on January 30, 2006 3:22 AM