The Brooklyn Blogosphere: How Big? How Diverse?

Two questions that came up regularly at the recent Brooklyn Blogfest were:

1. Just how many Brooklyn blogs are there?
2. How diverse is the blogosphere in our borough?
3. Does anyone care? Should they care?

The first question may be impossible to answer precisely since there is no one-stop registry of blogs. My blog roll has around 50 Brooklyn blogs, but this is a mere drop in the bucket. Probably the best place to get an estimate is the  interactive map of Brooklyn Bloggers by subway station at NYC Bloggers. I've never been able to guess how many jelly beans there are in a jar, but I would estimate there are at least 400-500 blogs listed there. Assuming that 1 in 10 bloggers lists their blog there, there could be thousands of blogs in Brooklyn.

Of course, not all of these blogs are updated regularly or have a larger readership. Not all of them deal with Brooklyn, either. Still, that's a bigger number than I would have guessed last Thursday at the festival.

The question of diversity is often tricky to answer, because it requires careful definition of the variable or variables of interest. If I'm asked to judge whether a jar of jellybeans is diverse, what do I base my answer on? Size? Color? Flavor? All of the above?

Another tricky aspect of diversity is that it is usually assessed in two dimensions - richness and evenness. These are terms borrowed from ecology, where both the number of different species (richness) and the distribution of individuals within those categories (evenness) are equally important. Is  a jar full of jellybeans that has  1 each of 49 flavors and 451 licorice more or less diverse than a jar that has 100 each of five very different flavors?

Diversity is important because it increases a system's ability to adapt to changing conditions. I'm going to assume that the question about blogger diversity was focused on the blog authors, as well as blog content, rather than the technical variables.  Those are the variables that matter when it comes to building and maintaining a community. Here's my short list of what's important in no particular order (and it is by no means exhaustive):

• Age
• Income Level
• Education Level
• Ethnic/Racial Heritage
• Political Leaning
• Geographic Location

The last one is important because the physical attributes of your neighborhood may have a lot to do with your values and assumptions. People with yards, automobiles and relatively more space  may have different priorities than the more urban areas of the borough.

Once you select the variables of interest, you still have the problem of how to measure them. Bloggers are often anonymous; very little of the information listed above is readily available. Still, I thought I might to look at distribution among different neighborhoods, because that might give some clues if the demographics of the neighborhood are known. The graphic below depicts how the 218 blogs listed on the 2 train are distributed:

Conclusion?
(I'd like to hear what you think, but my unsolicited, unscientific conclusion is below the fold)

CONCLUSION: Along this particular subway line, the blogs seem to be concentrated in "Brownstone Brooklyn."

Why?

I think there are three factors that determine whether or not one blogs:

• Interest
• Capability
• Access

Interest is self-explanatory, if you don't like to write, read, take pictures, or share your thoughts with anonymous readers, then you won't  blog. Is this variable influenced by neighborhood culture? Maybe, but I think it's the least important of the three in explaining the differences between neighborhoods.

Capability refers to the skills required. You may like writing, but do you know how manage a web page? Can you process digital photographs. It's true that improved software is making this much less of a barrier to entry than it used to be, but I think it's still a significant contributor. There are probably plenty of people who read blogs who say "I wish I could do that, but I don't do computer stuff." Still, if they had the means, the skills are relatively easy to acquire.

This leaves access as the most important variable, in my opinion. Can you afford the equipment, the connection, and the time? Free time is not just a matter of having it, but setting priorities on what you do with it. Maybe I'm a sports fan that would like to start a blog, but given my limited free time during the work week, I'm not willing to give up my softball team in exchange.

Is any of this really important?

I think so. Blogging is a powerful method for organizing interest groups within a community. Interest groups that don't have access or capability may be at a disadvantage vs. other interest groups that do. Perhaps one of the things that the loose association of bloggers that attended the recent Blogfest could do is start a program to improve access and capability in communities that don't yet have a well developed blogospere.

Would this improve the quality of life in those neighborhoods?

I don't know, but if community building is important to bloggers it would seem a logical step to take.

Comments

[Dope]

You might have seen a more diverse group if the event had been more widely publicized!

What!? You don't read the announcements on this blog?

Seriously, we could have used a giant Brooklyn blogger e-mail distribution list, because that is more reliable than relying on announcements on a dozen or so blogs out of thousands. I'm currently working on constructing one, but it takes a lot of pointing and clicking. It may be awhile. Hopefully I can export it to a file that can be easily uploaded to the various mail programs.

All part of the learning experience.

Maybe we should have a follow-up meet & greet or something pretty soon. Kind of like the monthly get-togethers they announce over at Daily Heights.

[Da Nator]

The economic/social class tie-in makes sense. I would be interested to know the queer/straight ratio, too, but maybe that's just me.

Incidentally, I never even heard about the Blogfest. You might have seen a more diverse group if the event had been more widely publicized!

[Dope]

Man, this could take years of scientific study

I'm sure there is a graduate student working on something similar right now somewhere. The graphic may just be showing that there are more blogs where there are more people, but I would need some sophisticated analysis to estimate how many people are within x diamter of the subway station, and how would you account for the fact that the people on the web site don't necessarily choose the closest stop to link to?

Too geeky for Thursday.

Time to start planning the weekend.

[lesterhead]

Man, this could take years of scientific study. I'd imagine there are many, many blogs out in the BK. Depends on how you want to classify them. Are "Brooklyn Blogs" all blogs written in or by residents of the borough? Just blogs influenced by or about the borough?

[Dope]

I noticed at the Brooklyn Blogfest is that there weren't a lot of folks of color.

That's probably also function of the virtual social networks that emerge from the hyperlinking. It was an open event, but most of the bloggers who visit the blogs that advertised it probably have significantly overlapping interests. There are definitely some African American bloggers out there, but it's not always easy to know the ethnic background of a virtual personality unless it's explicitly advertised on the blog itself. I think the hip-hop culture has adopted blogging as a medium for spreading news about shows and even sharing mp3 files, but it's hard to know exactly who is behind the blog since that genre of music has such broad appeal.

I was also surprised not to see any Latino bloggers or senior bloggers, but I know there are some out there as well.

Hopefully next year we will see a larger and more diverse population of attendees.

I think the key is targeting differnet neighborhoods on the NYC blogger map, that's probably the quickest route to different cultural/economic demographics. I wonder if there is anyone blogging from the Brooklyn Public Library? I guess I should look into that.

[Creative Times]

My hunch is that the demographics of bloggers that you charted has a big tie-in to economic class. Folks who have access to resources - education, time, and information - and who feel that their voice matters - will be the ones blogging and blogging the most frequently.

One thing I noticed at the Brooklyn Blogfest is that there weren't a lot of folks of color.

It's always an interesting challenge to put our minds around the project of keeping circles of information diverse and inclusive and reflective of many realities.