Part 2 of this analysis looked at Twitter.
Where Twitter allows users to wade in and out of discussions, share the thought-of-the-moment and rebroadcast ideas or information that resonate with them, blogging typically requires more time. It takes a special person to write a blog, someone with patience and attention span. Blog authors are typically interested enough in a particular topic to write a longer-form thought piece which can attract and maintain eyeballs. Bloggers are often passionate about what they write.
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 when the writ was dropped on March 25. Since the election call, we’ve seen 4,943 blog posts.
Blogs had a slow start to the election – after all, it was called just before midday on a Saturday when people shouldn’t be blogging (though doing analysis is okay).
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.
Young voters are not blogging. In fact, 41% of bloggers are 21 through 35, the age most closely associated with those finishing up their education, beginning working and professional lives, starting families and buying homes. Thirty-six through 50 year-olds are the second largest group of bloggers (33%). Roughly one quarter of bloggers are over 50. Age distribution was determined from 318 disclosing bloggers.
Most bloggers are male (72%). Not surprisingly, really. It’s safe to say most men feel they have something to say that others want to hear (guilty as charged). Gender distribution was determined from 733 disclosing bloggers.
Most bloggers are Communications or Media professionals (11.7%). This category includes journalism and public relations. Indeed, many journalists also maintain blogs in parallel to their professional reporting. It’s interesting to note that those in education including professors are the second most involved political bloggers (10.9%) just edging out people who identify themselves as consultants (10.7%). There’s also representation from students (6.8%). Given the age demographics, we can assume the students are in graduate and post-graduate studies. Industry distribution was determined from 510 disclosing bloggers (14.2% of whom identified themselves as Other, a category I otherwise ignored).
Ontario has the most active election bloggers (63%). Quebec (12%) and B.C. (10%) round out the top three. Manitoba (6%) apparently has more election bloggers than Alberta (4%).
Because blogs allow writers to be more expansive in their thoughts, not restricted by character count or pressured by the speed of Twitter, we see a very different BuzzGraph.
Naturally we see some of the main election issues including coalition and debate in the conversation. However, the graph shows a larger discussion on Canadian politics and the political system (writ, politics, campaign, governance, democratic, democracies, voter) which includes a discussion that reaches beyond the two major parties (terms such as bloc, québécois, quebec) and the media (cbc).
The Word Cloud also shows a different conversation from the one we observed for Twitter.
Next up in the week in review analysis… forums.
Charts, graphs and analysis made possible by Sysomos MAP.
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