Awhile ago I received an email from Mikao’s World.
Michelle was doing a survey of god-blogs.
It’s going online but the permalinks and archives aren’t working.
One of the things LivingRoom responds to is the language of the survey, ie: the use of ‘Christian’ and ‘non-Christian’.
Given that this survey has been done as part of a Master’s degree from a Canadian bible college, the 135 bloggers in the survey probably are quite familar with evangelical sub-language of inclusion or exclusion.
The survey was conducted in two parts.
The survey found that god-bloggers are kind of holy huddlers.
This begs the question why? The nature of the medium, the audience, the bloggers?
Many of the results concur with what I found in the god-blog demographic survey of about 1000 blogs in November 2003. Michelle asked for response.
The November survey was done without blogger input. The few of us who are looking at the sub-division of god-blogs such as myself, LivingRoom and Michelle have quite similar findings.
Michelle will continue to post the findings of her survey.
I see a bit of disconnect between how bloggers see themselves and how they actually act.
Although there was some confusion about the question “Would you consider yourself to be a part of a Christian circle of blogging?” the results of the question were as follows:
* 23% (27/115) of respondents said no, they did not consider themselves to be part of a circle of Christian blogging.
* Many stated that yes, they did feel as though they were a part of a Christian circle of blogging for one or more of the following reasons:- They only read the weblogs of other Christians
- Their readership is mostly, if not all, Christian
- They are linked to by only other Christian bloggers
- They are part of an explicit blogging community like “St Blogs” or “The Blogdom of God,” and a few mentioned being linked on blogs4God.com.
- They post primarily on Christian topics
- They include mostly Christian content on their site
- They are a Christian, so yes therefore are part of the Christian blogging community. April 5th entry
This is an interesting snapshot of what I ‘hear’ as mostly protestant bloggers and I’m wondering what the cross section of respondants will be.
I asked survey respondents whether or not they were aware if they had any regular non-Christian readers of their weblog, and if so, what percent of their readership was. 17% (20/115) said no, they do not have any non-Christian readers. 28% (32/115) said they did not know or have no idea as to whether or not any of their regular readers are Christian. Three out of the 115 respondents said the majority of their regular readers are non-Christians. Six out of the 115 respondents said half of their regular readers are non-Christians.
Interesting that so many didn’t know who their readership is.
Is that a technical choice, or an insular one?
I’ve been looking forward to this project and want to thank Michelle for beginning to post it and ponder it.
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I just stumbled across this, so I wasn’t aware of the survey before. But I wonder how anybody would know the precise nature of their readership. Short of posting a survey or some such, there’s nothing in visitor logs that would tell you whether your visitors are Christian or not. Presumably those who link to us, and those who leave comments are Christian, except for the occasional atheist who just wants to argue with somebody ;>)
Otherwise, readership could be anybody. In our case at least, it really doesn’t matter who our readers are, so long as somebody’s reading the blog!
Hi Bene, thanks for your post here, I appreciate your thoughts. And, I have fixed the archives, I’m still working on the permalinks though! I’m still learning much in regards to coding webpages!
In response to Trudy’s comment, I don’t think it is possible to fully know the precise nature of your readership. Visitor and hit logs don’t tell us anything about a reader’s faith. I asked survey respondents whether or not they were aware if they had any regular non-Christian readers of their blog… and I think most determined regular readers by comments left.
I don’t know if everyone’s “regular readers” always leave comments. You can track regular readers so much with traffic logs, through this I am aware that I have at least one regular reader who never comments. People like that you can’t determine their faith orientation.
But if those you define as regular readers are regular commenters with blogs of their own that you read (or they email you, or you know them in the flesh), you can often determine whether or not they are Christian or non-Christian.
I don’t believe however that you can assume anyone who links to you or comments is a Christian. I know that it’s not always true from experience.
Is it essential to know who your readership is? I think that it is something to consider if you are writing for them, but it all depends on the goals of your blogging. Knowing your audience is one of the principles of good writing.
I hope this makes sense… it’s a mish mash of thoughts.
Hi Michelle:
I have great respect for any blogger that does their own coding. Something goes wrong at this blog I holler for help, it wasn’t a slight just a reminder to linkers to be patient.
We kind of jumped on your blog there, I’ve been looking forward to what you have to say.:^)
I think you are mostly correct.
I don’t ‘know’ my full readership, the majority don’t leave comments, I don’t care what faith they are.
I care about other things that a log can tell me.
I care that I reach an international readership.
I care that I occasionally get people in the government to pay attention,
I care that I provide readers with good information so they can make up their own minds.
I care that anyone who does email or comment is treated with respect and dignity and without assumptions.
I care that commenters know they are heard.
So your question makes sense.
I can’t know my full readership which is pretty cool.
I can improve my communication on this blog with what I can know about my readers.
Looking forward to more from your survey, apart from a few polls and a survey e-church send out, your contacting bloggers with in-depth questions is the only other god-blog survey I know about.
Blog on!