Throughout this election, I’m working with the Canadian Press to cover the digital element of the election. The plan is to cover online activities for the media and provide supplemental information on my blog. We’ve put most of our energy into Twitter coverage (it’s the most active digital channel). Today, we turned our sights on the blogosphere.
TWITTER vs. THE BLOGOSPHERE
Where Twitter allows people to wade in and out of discussions, share the thought-of-the-moment and rebroadcast ideas or information that resonates with them, blogging takes more time. It takes a special person to write a blog. Someone with patience and attention span.. You need to be more interested and invested in a particular topic to both write something longer-form that has some thought behind it and that can attract eyeballs.
Election blogs can’t compete with the volume of tweets. Having said that, there is a noticeable increase in political and election blogs leading up to the final week of the 40th session of Parliament and since the writ was dropped on March 25. Since the election call, we’ve seen about 4,500 blogs.
But it’s not the number of blogs that are interesting as much as the demographic data we’re able to extract from them. Unlike Twitter where profile information is rarely completed and offers limited information, some bloggers offer identifying information such as age, gender, location and profession. We’re able to make some assumptions about the election blogosphere based on a sample set of profile information.
21-35 MOST ACTIVE BLOGGERS (20 AND UNDER AREN’T HERE)
From 205 blog profiles, we’re able to determine that the 20 and under group (0.9%) are not engaged at this level. The 21-35 age group is the most active (37%) and 36-50 group (35%) are a close second. I was pleased to see good representation from the 51-and-over group (27%).
SKEWS MALE
Not surprisingly, men dominate the political blogosphere (71%). I suppose this is because most men feel they have something to say that others want to hear (guilty as charged). Age distribution has been determined from 505 of 2,936 blog results.
CONSULTANTS OUT FRONT
Based on 356 profiles, most bloggers identify themselves as working in the consulting industry (12%). Perhaps these are folks who work in politics including lobbyists, though the details are not available. The second place spot is shared by communications or media and education (11%). It’s nice to see that students have strong representation (7%). Other notables… government (6%), agriculture (4%) and religion (3%).
LARGELY ONTARIO-BASED
Geographically, Ontario dominates the election blogosphere – man I dislike that word (61%). Quebec trails (14%) and B.C. places third (10%). It’s interesting to note Manitoba has a strong showing (6%).
And here’s a pretty picture of geographical blog concentration for you.
MOSTLY STEPHEN HARPER
The word cloud shows us that (not surprisingly) Stephen Harper is getting most of the air time on blogs. Michael Ignatieff is competing with terms including election, Canada, campaign and government. Coalition is the only campaign issue to make it to the word cloud.
COALITION AND DEBATES ARE THE FRONT-RUNNING ISSUES
We see that for the first six days of the election, coalition and the official debates are the most talked about issues. Otherwise, the word relationships speak to a larger conversation about Canadian politics and political system.
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