Political blogs not well read, BYU prof says

A new book by a Brigham Young University professor suggests political blogs are read by only a small percentage of the population that isn't representative of most Americans.

"The political blog audience is a niche. The vast majority of people don't read political blogs," said BYU political science professor Richard Davis, author of "Typing Politics."

A 2007 survey found that fewer than 10 percent read political blogs several times a week, Davis said, with 23 percent reading them several times a month. And those readers "are actually very different than the general public."

The more than 600 political blog readers surveyed were better educated than the general public, he said, and more likely to be single and a member of a minority.

"They also tend to be more extreme politically. They are more likely to be either liberal or conservative, but not moderate," Davis said. "I think that's because people who are passionate about politics have strong opinions and they're more likely to want to go to a political blog and have that opinion reinforced."

Among those surveyed calling themselves liberals, 70 percent reported reading only liberal blogs, he said. Yet only 45 percent of the blog readers who identified themselves as conservatives said they read only conservative blogs. That could be because the blogosphere tends toward the left, Davis said.

Blog readers still get most of the news from the mainstream media, he said, even though they "are concerned they're not getting the whole side of the story there. They suspect habitual bias in the traditional news content."

Davis said his findings that just 3 percent of daily blog readers get most of their news from blogs run counter to claims made by bloggers that they would replace the mainstream media.

"What I found is that bloggers were following national newspapers," he said, something he doubts has changed much since his study. Journalists are hesitant to trust bloggers as news sources. Bloggers, though, refer to news stories in the mainstream media.

Davis, who heads the Utah County Democratic Party, said there's a lesson in his research for political candidates.

"Blogs are probably not the way for a candidate in a general election campaign to convert anyone," he said. "The blog world needs to be recognized as a force now, but they should not overestimate the audience."