Blogger ain’t journalists

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.’’

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.

... contd.