All the Colors of the Blogosphere? Political Participation and Blogs Accross Race, Gender and Ethnicity

By:
Dr Antoinette Pole
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This research investigates whether the blogosphere facilitates political participation among women bloggers and bloggers of color. Among the top political blogs, blogging has primarily been undertaken by white men coined by Chris Nolan as the "Big Boys Club." Since previous research examines the top political blogs, this research looks at a broader cross-section of blogs written by women and minorities, assessing how these groups use blogs to participate.

This paper employs survey data collected from bloggers in June 2005 and content analysis from blogs written by women and minorities. Since this research is exploratory I raise several questions. Do women and minority bloggers differ from other bloggers in their approaches to blogging? What issues and topics are discussed by women and minority bloggers? And finally, if women and minority bloggers are under-represented in the blogosphere, what effect, if any, does this have on political participation in the blogosphere?


Keywords: Weblogs, Blogs, Political Participation, Race, Gender
Stream: Human Technologies and Useability
Presentation Type: 30 minute Paper Presentation in English
Paper: Black Bloggers and the Blogosphere

Dr Antoinette Pole

Post-Doctoral Fellow, The Taubman Center on Public Policy, Brown University
USA

Antoinette Pole received her Ph.D. (2005), CUNY, Graduate School & University Center. The title of her dissertation is "E-mocracy: Information Technology & State Legislatures." She has published "E-mocracy: Information Technology The Vermont & New York Legislatures" in State and Local Government Review (Winter 2005), "Trends E-Represntation: The Vermont and New York State Legislature" in Spectrum the Journal of State Government (Summer 2004), and "The Role of Computing Technology and the New York State Legislature" in the Handbok of Public Information Systems. In August of 2004 she presented "Do Blogs Matter? Weblogs in American Politics" at the American Political Science Association's annual conference.

Ref: T06P0072