Blogs & Censorship
Sarah Perez on December 6th, 2005
There is an interesting article over at CNET about censorship of blogs. The article discusses a survey by a web hosting company called Hostway, who polled 2,500 Americans on blogging. Some highlights:
- 80% did not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens.
- 72% favored censorship of personal information about celebrities
- 68% favored censorship of information about elected or appointed government officials such as judges or mayors
- 52% percent of those surveyed said bloggers should have the same rights as traditional journalists
But what’s really funny about the survey is that more than one-third of respondents had never heard of blogs before participating in the survey. So, I would take these results with a grain of salt, so to speak. If the respondents don’t know what a blog is, how can they have an opinion?
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I just finished a huge project on blogs today for one of my doctoral seminars… the statistics on blog readership are really out there. Some surveys say 3% of people read blogs daily, others 30%. Nobody really knows, apparently. Since my paper was kind of contingent on blogs being “big business,” I used the larger number.