Blogger Motivations Shifting Towards Expression

A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project details the primary motivations among those who blog and who they are.

Some 77 percent of bloggers are primarily driven by expression, Pew found. More than 40 percent said they never quote sources or other media directly and a scant 34 percent see what they do as journalism. Finally, 54 percent of bloggers are under age 30 and overall we're evenly divided between men and women.

As Reuters correctly notes, the research demonstrates that blogging is moving more mainstream, thanks to the surging interest in social network/blog hybrid sites such as MySpace and LiveJournal (MySpace is an Edelman client).

Regardless of what the research says, even if citizen journalism does not drive the majority of bloggers, those who do "practice" it are certainly influencing the mainstream media in a big way. If the blogopshere doesn't add another citizen journalist, it will always help shape what the mainstream media covers.

Nevertheless, it does have ramifications for PR. This means that the smaller universe of bloggers who do break and/or comment on news will bear the brunt of pitches from the public relations community. The online media is dividing into three strata - the mainstream media, news blogs and expressionist blogs. The first two categories are where the PR community should focus.