Pew researchers called 233 bloggers between July 2005 and February this year and undertook additional, larger-scale telephone surveys through April. These follow-up surveys yielded a sample of 7,012 adults, which included 4,753 Internet users, 8 percent of whom are bloggers. The margin of error was 6.7 percent.

Fifty-four percent of the bloggers said they have never been published anywhere other than on their own blogs, while 44 percent said their work has been seen elsewhere. More than three-quarters of bloggers, 77 percent, said they have posted something online that they created themselves, such as art, photographs or videos.

By comparison, only 26 percent of Internet users in general have done so. Forty-four percent of the bloggers have taken material they found online— such as songs, text or images—and remixed it or altered it into their own artistic creation, the survey said, whereas only 18 percent of all Internet users normally do that. Sixty-one percent of bloggers said they rarely or never get permission to use other people’s copyrighted material. Despite—or perhaps because of—the personal, even confessional nature of much of the blogosphere, 55 percent of bloggers write under a pseudonym, the study found.

About 34 percent see their blogging as a form of journalism; 65 percent disagreed. Just over a third of the bloggers said they often conduct journalistically appropriate tasks such as verifying facts and linking to source material. More than 40 percent of bloggers said they never quote sources or other media directly, and 11 percent said they post corrections.

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