Looking at the Bright Side of the Latest Blog Study

CNET is reporting that Hostway polled 2,500 Americans on blogging. The headlines tonight and tomorrow will parrot what CNET said - that 80% of respondents support at least some censorship. I am choosing to look at the bright side. I have worked on enough PR surveys to know that the sponsoring companies typically write the questions to generate sexy, media-friendly findings. Look deeper however, and I think there's a lot to be excited about...

• 30% of those surveyed read blogs. That's a lot, people.
  
• The majority, 52% of those surveyed, said bloggers should have the same rights as traditional journalists, while 27% did not express an opinion. Whoa!
  
• A minority, 39%, said that they found blogs less credible than newspaper articles. However an additional 32% said they either did not know or had no opinion. To me, this means that there is an opening for bloggers to be respected.
  

Call me pollyanna, but I think there's more here than meet headlines screaming Americans Support Censoring Blogs. It will be interesting to see how the blogosphere reacts to this.

Comments

[paul]

CNET is a FUD factory.

[Matt Terenzio]

A few months ago I did your informal survey about blogs at a local newspaper which I work at.
I found the number of people who had heard of blogs to around 30 to 40%. Those that read them 20 to 30%.
I felt this wasn't such a high number at the time, considering we were in the news media business, but I can definitely see that 36% of the general public having read blogs to be a significant number.
I have to wonder if the general public has surpassed the newspaper companies in recogniton and use of blogs. Scary thought.

[Alex Halavais]

It strikes me that what you see here is people coming out *for* privacy. I suspect that if you asked the same questions about newspapers (should the publish people's addresses, or the details of stars private lives) you would get very similar answers.

It's disappointing that only 39% found blogs less credible than traditional media. Sorry, but blogs are, taken as a whole, absolutely less credible than traditional news media. It doesn't surprise me at all to find the majority are not media-literate enough to recognize this.