The Blog Herald has named their The Top 10 interesting people in the Blogosphere in 2004. It's an interesting list in that the trends remain the same, visibility is limited to filter blogs and primarily male bloggers. Here are some quick observations (using grounded theory methods):

• All of the blogs are solo authored
• All of the bloggers listed are filter bloggers (most posts on their current main pages are very link heavy)
• All are written by Americans or writers working from an American cultural context
• Eight are political blogs (definition of 'political' is a applied broadly here)
• Two are by blogging technical/software corporate types
• Nine are male
• The only female is introduced at eighth place with the following:
  If the award was for the most interest female blogger on the net, Cox would top the list.

The post includes a list of who they knowingly missed in the list of ten. It includes seven more blogs:

• Six are Americans or writers working from an American cultural context
• One is Australian
• One is a corporate blog produced by a blogging software company
  On the current main page:
  • Four persons have posted:
    • Two names appear to be male
    • One name appears to be female
    • One is unclear
• Four are solo bloggers
  • All solo bloggers are male
  • One blogs about Public Relations
  • Two are political blogs (again the term is broadly applied)
  • One is a picture blog with comment
• One is an aggregator
  On the current main page:
  • All are white
  • Six males are pictured with their posts
  • One female is pictured
  • One post is taken from a group blog:
    On the current main page:
    • All are male
    • Two are clearly white
    • One blogger's race is indistinct to this viewer
• One is billed as an online journalism review with a stated editor, and stories from a variety of authors. (Gender and ethnic analysis of this site goes beyond the time allowed for this down-and-dirty llisting.)

So the trends we discussed in Women and Children Last hold true even after a year of blogging advancement. The privileged bloggers are primarily male, white, and American. Their blogs are filters, and are primarily political or technical oriented.

Reference List:

Herring, Susan C., Kouper, Inna, Scheidt, Lois Ann, & Wright, Elijah (2004). Women and Children Last: The Discourse Construction of Weblogs. In Laura J. Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, & Jessica Reyman (Eds.), Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Retrieved July 2, 2004 from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html.

Posted by prolurkr at December 22, 2004 09:19 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.professional-lurker.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/358

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Another end of the year blogosphere list:

Comments