A wide-ranging study of bloggers, the chattering class of the Internet, concluded that a mere 5 percent of them use news as their primary topic—a figure at odds with perceptions that blogging is remaking journalism.

The study, released on Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, reported that 37 percent of those surveyed cited their own life and experiences as primary fodder for their blogs. Eleven percent of the respondents said they blog regularly about politics and government; 7 percent about entertainment; 6 percent about sports, and lesser fractions on business, technology and faith.

‘‘Blogs are as individual as the people who keep them, but this survey shows that most bloggers are primarily interested in creative, personal expression,’’ Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher for the Internet project, said in a statement. ‘‘Blogs make it easy to document individual experiences, share practical knowledge or just keep in touch with friends and family.’’

That is how blogs began in the mid-1990s, with web surfers linking others to sites they found compelling. Some added remarks and commentaries to the links. By 1997, the expression ‘‘web log’’ emerged, later contracted to ‘‘blog.’’

The Pew survey, one of several conducted by the group, an arm of the Pew Research Center, in the last few years to determine citizen involvement in cyberspace, estimated that 12 million American adults, or about 8 percent of Internet users, keep a blog. About 39 percent of web users in the United States, or 57 million adults, read them. More than half of all bloggers, 54 percent, responded that they are under the age of 30, the survey said.

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