If I were a sociologist, I’d be studying the cultural differences in blogging behavior and attitudes. Every nation approaches blogging differently but I don’t think we know why. The Telegraph Media Group just conducted a survey across various countries and found, according to the Guardian (can’t find the story at the Telegraph):
According to the research, just 13% of those surveyed in Britain had read an individual’s blog in the past week, compared with 40% in the US, 25% in France and 12% in Denmark.
Newspaper blogs were even less popular, the study of more than 9,000 readers of websites and newspapers found.
But keep in mind that there are also a lot fewer newspaper blogs than personal blogs, so I’d say these numbers are good for the papers.
Just 12% of UK readers had read a newspaper blog in the past week, compared with 24% in America, 10% in France and 9% in Denmark.
And 95% of those surveyed in the US said they had used a website for news in the past week, compared with 89% in Britain, 81% in France and 78% in Denmark.
I believe that’s a much higher number than I’ve seen in other surveys. I’d like to see how they define news in the survey.
The lowest levels of response were for people who had actually written their own blog – 3% in Britain and Denmark, 7% in the US and 8% in France.
“There’s a reserved nature in the British market when it comes to writing a blog,” said a source at the Telegraph Media Group, which commissioned the survey.
I’ve heard many theories about why people blog less in the UK. One theory in the UK is that there are already outlets of opinion in papers while in the U.S. we have our monolithic monopolies in most cities. Another is that we’re just different. We’re not reserved.
: A while back, Tim Dunlop speculates about the differences between the American and Australian blog worlds.
