The Canadian political blogosphere includes political commentary using any social media technology. Its culture differs from that of Europe or the US. The term 'blogosphere' was first formed colloquially in 1999, and has since evolved to mean "the cultural or intellectual environment in which blogs are written and read."
In Canada, the 'blog' employs a vast array of social media technology. This includes traditional forms of individual blogging hosted through personal websites or blogging tools such as Blogger or Tumblr, and has also come to include micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter. In Canada, blogging has more recently been adopted by the mainstream media. By necessity, these traditional forms of news media aspire to retain a voice in an increasingly globalized public sphere. Presently, three of Ontario's major newspapers (The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post) retain a roster of bloggers, each providing commentary on current events.
Political blogs A primary player in this new rapid-fire culture of information sharing is the 'political blog,' a term use to describe any blog that provides written commentary on current political news and events. Scholar Antoinette Pole views the political blog as a "prominent agent driving many rapid changes...[and] fundamentally transforming politics and civic engagement." In the United States, a country of increasingly polarized mainstream ideologies, Pole acknowledges that blogging is a phenomenon that may only make these differences more problematic. However, in Canada, a country where political divides are often less clear-cut, the atmosphere surrounding political blogging is entirely different and lines are more blurred. The dominant demographics and ideologies of the Canadian political blogosphere are different enough from their Western counterparts to merit their own course of study.
Variety of opinion The views purveyed throughout the Canadian political blogosphere are as varied as the nation from which they stem. Despite this, particular demographics and ideologies are, as they are in any geography (material or not), inevitably more dominant than others, and definitively indicative of a specific intellectual culture. This is evident in an investigation of the dominant demographics and ideologies of blogs that are political in nature. Various studies initiated in Canada have made it clear that the vast majority of those who blog from a political perspective tend to write from the right-of-centre on the political spectrum. The immense growth and popularity of the Canadian political blogosphere is the complex product of particular demographics and ideologies, as well as a natural response to what Marshall McLuhan described as the global village or, perhaps more poetically in his hallmark text "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man", as technological "extensions of consciousness."
The Demographics of the Canadian blogosphere
Age Canadian political bloggers occupy an older age demographic than regular internet users, and the rest of the general blogosphere. In 2004, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology surveyed nearly 500 bloggers from forty different countries. The research found that one half of individuals who said they blogged regularly were between the ages of 21 and 30. Perhaps more surprisingly, one third of individuals surveyed indicated they were between the ages of 31 and 40.
Some data also exists that aims to identify the dominant demographics of readers and writers of political blogs. In 2006 a survey was put forth by advertising company 'blogads' that obtained approximately 36,000 responses from bloggers and blog readers worldwide (including a small percentage of Canadians). 22 percent of respondents who described themselves as blog readers were between the ages of 31 and 40, while a 27 percent were between the ages of 41 and 50, and a startling 23 percent between the ages of 51 and 60. This data, in contrast to the MIT study above, suggests that political bloggers are on average older than the general blogosphere. The little available Canadian data on the subject is in accordance with the aforementioned international trends, with only 50 percent of Canadians who engage in blog-use being between the ages of 18 and 34.
Education In Canada, 45 percent of readers and writers of blogs hold post-secondary degrees. Currently, the group that most commonly utilizes blog networks as news sources are students under the age of 25.
Background Nearly 80 percent of Canadian bloggers are white.
Income With the exception of students in the midst of pursuing higher education, readers and writers of blogs in Canada tend to be in middle to high income brackets. A 2005 Ipsos-Reid survey found blogging to be most popular among individuals with an annual income of $60,000 a year or more. This can be seen to exist in correlation with the above data on bloggers and education.
Gender imbalance The gender imbalance amongst users of the Canadian blogosphere is striking. Nearly half of Canadian men report they regularly engage with the blogosphere as content-producers or as readers, while only 35 percent of women report the same. This gender discrepancy seen in the Canadian blogosphere mirrors the blogging demographics of other Western nations. Of the 500 respondents to the aforementioned international 2004 MIT study, only 36 percent of respondents identified as female.
Puzzlingly, this data exists in contradiction to the gender demographics of Canadian users in forms of other social media. Ipsos-Reid's 2009 research titled "What? You Don't Have a Social Network Profile? You Are Now in the Minority" indicates that in Canadian spheres of social media such as Facebook and Myspace, genders are evenly matched with the percentage of female users at times exceeding their male counterparts. On an international level, 53 percent of micro-blogging tool Twitter's users are reported to be female. Furthermore, Statistics Canada's biannual data of Canadian internet usage reveals that comparable percentages of men and women report having regular internet access to the internet at home.
The participatory imbalance between male and female Canadian bloggers could be the result of a multitude of factors. The most simple explanation results from an examination of the Canadian blogosphere's gender demographics in tandem with existing statistics on blogger education levels, and average age. Given that Canadian blog users are generally a) in older age brackets in comparison to those who access the internet for general purposes, and b) on average hold higher levels of education than casual internet users (see above), it might be that the progression of time will see a narrowing of the educational gap between men and women. With this closure, and as more women come to mirror the educational demographics of Canadian bloggers, it is possible that the gap between genders in the blogosphere will close also.
Given that the gender gap is also evident from studies of the American and other international blogospheres, a study of female political bloggers internationally is pertinent. In "Blogging the Political" scholar Antoinette Pole notes that the gap between male and female political bloggers is quite pronounced. In offering explanations for this disparity, Pole indicates that 75 percent of women who blog politically say they regularly face challenges in the blogosphere specific to their gender. These challenges may explain the lack of female political bloggers in the Canadian blogosphere. When taken into account that conservative political blogging accounts for a high percentage of all political blogging in Canada (see section titled 'Dominant Ideologies' for more), some conclusions for the lack of female political bloggers in Canada can be drawn. Pole believes that female conservative political bloggers face more challenges than their female liberal counterparts, writing that in the conservative blogosphere many women find they have great difficulty being taken seriously "on intellectual merit alone." Others reported backlash from readers in feminist communities. As conservative political blogging is more dominant in Canada, and since female conservative political bloggers face challenges specific to their ideologies, this may very well explain an element of the gender divide.
Furthermore, regardless of ideological grouping, the same study finds that the overwhelming majority of women in the political blogosphere are regular targets of sexism. Its author found that "due to limitations on space and pressure to attract large readerships" the mainstream media has a tendency to overlook, and under-reference, blogs written by women in favour of blog material written by men. She suggests that one reason mainstream media outlets do this is to pander to a predominantly male audience. Given that the mainstream Canadian media functions in largely the same business model as other major international media conglomerates, it is likely that the challenges described by female bloggers in Pole's study are equally applicable to the Canadian political blogosphere. Many individuals in the field of Media Studies find this gender gap to be extremely troubling, and symptomatic of the continued institutionalized alienation of women from the political arena.
Dominant ideologies Demographics indicate, along with a cursory study of the Canadian political blogosphere, that the dominant ideology is right of centre.Please see final section in article for reasons why in Canada making a definitive claim is problematic. A number of self-described conservative blog aggregates exist, the most dominant being the 'Blogging Tories' which includes more than 300 blogs from the political right. Most Canadian conservative blogging networks view themselves as an alternative voice to what they perceive to be the liberalism of the mainstream media. While the group believes that they have "helped to counter a media that is not very friendly to the party," one blogger notes that the blogging circle remains widely unknown outside of its own ideological sphere. The idea that the political right dominates the Canadian political blogosphere can also be seen in the views of other members of the Blogging Tories such as the blog Small Dead Animals, which ascribes to the view that Canadian conservatives "have been forced to listen while media and politicians alike have told me 'what Canadians think'...'You don't speak for me.'" Some content created by the Blogging Tories and Small Dead Animals has been criticized as offensive by others in the larger political blogosphere. The success of right-wing Canadian blogging lies in the belief held by the political right that they are a marginalized group within broader public discourse. To the individuals who comprise this subgroup of the Canadian blogosphere, right-wing political blogging is a means of fighting perceived oppression. This may explain its dominance.