Women and Children Last: The Discursive Construction of Weblogs

Abstract

An Apparent ParadoxWeblogs ("blogs"), frequently modified webpages containing individual entries displayed in reverse chronological sequence, are the latest mode of computer-mediated communication (CMC) to attain widespread popularity.As with other new CMC technologies, blogs have been hailed as democratizing-any literate person can self-publish content in a blog, and reach an audience of potentially millions, for little or no cost.Moreover, the success of individual blogs in attracting readers and influencing opinion depends less on their formal credentials than on the quality of their ideas and their writing (what Winer, 2003, calls their "voice").Certainly blog authors are numerous: In the five years since the introduction of the first free web-based blogging tools (Pitas and Blogger;Blood, 2002b), the number of people creating and maintaining blogs has grown exponentially, from fewer than 100 to over four million (Henning, 2003).Anecdotal accounts also suggest that they are diverse: the mainstream media have reported on popular blogs authored by individuals as varied as university adjuncts, dark horse candidates for political office, and a gay Iraqi dissident (McCarthy, 2003).As yet, however, there has been little empirical examination of the claim that blogs are "democratic," or that blog authors represent diverse demographic groups.Fifteen years ago, a similar claim was advanced with respect to Internet discussion forums and chat rooms.Text-based CMC was purported to be inherently democratizing, enabling anyone with access to participate, liberated from traditional biases associated with gender, age, race, social class, (dis)ability, and physical attractiveness (Graddol & Swann, 1989).Subsequent research revealed, however, that the demographics of actual forum participants were strongly skewed towards adult, white, English-speaking, technically-savvy males (Herring, 1992(Herring, , 1993;;Kramarae & Taylor, 1993).As recently as 1992, Lee Sproull (quoted in Kramarae & Taylor, 1993) estimated that only 5% of participants in Usenet newsgroups were female.It was not until the rise in popularity of Internet service providers and the introduction of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s that Internet access became available to a broader demographic spectrum, and that women started going online in numbers similar to men (Herring, 2003a).The history of online discussion forums thus shows that a "democratizing" technology does not automatically result in social equality, and points to the importance of social and cultural factors surrounding technology adoption and use.What, then, of weblogs?An initial consideration of the demographics of blog authors reveals an apparent paradox.Quantitative studies report as many (or more, depending on what one counts as a blog) female as male blog authors, and as many (or more) young people as adults (Henning, 2003;Orlowski, 2003), suggesting a diverse population of bloggers as regards gender and age representation.At the same time, as will be shown, contemporary discourses about weblogs, such as those propagated through the mainstream media, in scholarly communication, and in weblogs themselves, tend to disproportionately feature adult, male bloggers.This inconsistency led us to ask: what are the actual demographics of blog authors, determined according to what criteria?If significant numbers of female and teen bloggers exist, how can their relative absence from public discourses about weblogs be explained?