Study Finds Most Americans Don't Get News From Blogs

Posted on September 3, 2006

Blogs still are not a major news source for most Americans according to a new survey conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center of Ohio University. The survey queried 1,010 U.S. adults found that 88% of Americans are not reading blogs for news. Here are some findings from the survey.

88% said they never use blogs for news.

7% read blogs four days a week or less.

5% read blogs five days a week or more.

Nearly 25% of young adults read blogs at least once a week, compared to just 3 percent of people 65 or older.

Blogs more popular with singles and childless couples: "The survey found that blogs are more than twice as popular among single people with no children than with married couples with children. Internet experts agree that this is due to time constraints imposed by the demands of family life, while childless couples and singles have time to patiently read some of the 175,000 new blogs created every day."

Despite the results David Kline, co-author of Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business and Culture, told Scripps that blogs were still influential. Kline says, "I'm not sure that rate of usage is set in stone. For now, the significance of blogging is that it influences the influencers. Look at the political campaign for U.S. Senate in Connecticut. The blogosphere had a pretty clear effect on the outcome of the vote. And political bloggers impacted both politicians in the race, affecting what they talked about during the campaign."

The survey was a little confusing because it is unclear how survey respondents defined "news." For example, some people may not consider gossip or opinion as news and because of this they may discounted blogs as news sources. Blogs use as a news source should increase as people find more and more blogs that they can rely on and trust to provide both frequently published and reliable news information. As we have said before people do not always even know that what they are reading is a blog.