Blogging Beyond the Men's Club
Steven Levy,
Msnbc,
Mar 15, 2005
A number of people sent me this link raising the question, "why is the blogosphere dominated by white males?" It isn't, of course, as any excursion beyond what we see reported in the media will reveal - roam through random LiveJournal blogs or random Blogger blogs for a few hours and you'll see. But the supposed "Top 100 blogs" is, as noted by a panelist, "white people linking to other white people!" The members of the big spike grant the privilege of a link to people like themselves, and "A link from a popular blog is this medium's equivalent to a Super Bowl ad." Since most of the top bloggers got a push from mainstream media (they are newspaper and magazine columnists, former MTV VJs, and the like) it is not a surprise to see the big spike represent the demographics of that origin. The solution, of course, is not to make them link more representatively - they won't, and they'll make a big fuss while not doing it. The solution is to make the network structurally more inclusive.
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