Abstract

Appearing at the end of the 1990s, the phenomenon of ‘blogging’ or weblogging is beginning to attract serious academic research. However, the majority of this research has so far focussed on the ‘bloggers’ themselves – who they are; what they do and what their motivations are. Little research has yet been undertaken on the readers – or users – of blogs. This paper reports on the results of research undertaken in the spring of 2006 that investigated the users of journalistic or ‘news’ blogs. Surveying nearly 300 readers of ‘news’ blogs, the study focused on discovering why respondents read blogs, how many they read and how frequently; whether they interacted with the blogger by posting comments; and whether they used news blogs as a substitute for or an addition to more mainstream news media. In particular, this paper focuses on the dissatisfaction with the mainstream media and central government felt by many blog-readers and their use of blogs to learn about areas not covered by the mainstream media. However, the majority of respondents used both blogs and mainstream media to deliver their news and considered that this was a necessary and complementary relationship.