July 10, 2010 4:07pm by David Farrar

The New Zealand blogosphere

Andrew Cushen’s thesis studying the NZ Political blogosphere has been published and is online. Many (160) bloggers and (789) readers took part.

It is a weighty 252 pages, and has taken a while to get through. I’ve extracted some of the stats I find more interesting:

  • 24% of bloggers are aged under 25 and 87% are aged under 50
  • 79% of (political) bloggers are male and 21% female
  • 23% of bloggers earn more than $100,000 a year and 24% earn less than $20,000 a year. Only 9% earn between $20,000 and $40,000
  • Most of the low income bloggers are students (16/25)
  • 69% of bloggers have a degree, half being a post-graduate degree
  • 32% of bloggers are self employed, 26% work in the public sector, 29% work in the private sector, and 12% work for NGOs
  • 69% of bloggers have been a party member or volunteer
  • 34% of bloggers are in Wellington, 29% in Auckland, 11% in Canterbury, 6% Otago and 9% are overseas
  • 5% of political bloggers blog only on politics. 38% blog between 75% and 100% politics.26% blog between 50% and 75%, 24% blog between 25% and 50%.
  • 19% of bloggers explicitly support National, 16% Labour, 12% ACT, 12% Green, 4% Maori Party, 5% Progressive, 17% other parties and 50% do not support a party. Half the others are Libertarianz.
  • 46% of bloggers blog under their own names
  • 7% of bloggers have been blogging for 5+ years, 30% for under 1 year
  • 17% of bloggers update more than once a day, 12% daily, 40% several times a week, 11% weekly and 21% greater than weekly
  • There is a clear correlation between posting frequency and readership levels
  • 15% of bloggers spend over 10 hours a week blogging, 38% of bloggers spend under two hours a week
  • 16% of bloggers make money from advertising on their blogs
  • 18% of bloggers have 5,000+ unique readers
  • 96% allow comments
  • 6% of bloggers feel they have a leading influence upon political discussion, 18% a major influence, 30% average influence and 43% minor influence

And similar data on blog readers:

  • 78% of readers are male
  • 14% of readers earn under $20K and 21% over $100K. Most earn under $60,000
  • 71% of readers have a degree, and again half are post-graduate
  • 22% of readers are self employed, 40% work in the private sector and 31% in the state sector
  • 43% of readers have been a party member or volunteer
  • 36% of readers in Wellington, 28% Auckland, 10% Canterbury, 5% Otago and 7% overseas
  • 86% of readers read blogs as they offer alternate viewpoints on news and issues, 60% cite the fact they like the opinion of the author
  • 60% of readers read blogs more than once a day and 25% daily
  • 28% of readers spend over 5 hours a week reading blogs
  • 69% of readers have left a comment on a blog
  • In terms of inaccuracy of media types, 14% of readers said blog were inaccurate compared to 45% who said TV news was inaccurate
  • 52% of blog readers say blogs are very entertaining, compared to under 5% for all other media types. This is a fascinating stat – people enjoy the blogs far far more.

If you have the time, the full report is worth a read.