Advocacy Avenue

I just jogged through the new IPDI study called

The Audience For Political Blogs: New Research On Blog
Readership.

I highly recommend that you check it out. IDI has been a proud sponsor of George Washington University’s Institute of Politics, Democracy and the Internet, most notably at their annual Politics Online Conference. Here in DC, they have stayed on the cutting edge at the crossroads of politics and technology. As we all know, online technology is changing politics. The people who form an important vanguard in this sea change are daily political blog readers according to IPDI’s report. Daily political blog readers tend to get their news from the internet rather tv like most Americans. They tend to be less religious and more partisan than most Americans. Regular political blog readers also tend to be more politically active offline, e.g. making phone calls to politicians, joining issue organizations, attending meetings and rallies, etc.

The bottom line is that the blogs represent a hybrid of both independent media and activism. If you don’t appeal to both, you are unlikely to win with this influential audience. Here are the findings I found most interesting (emphasis not mine):

Daily readers are highly engaged in online political
activity, including forwarding political material to others and contacting
their representatives online. A large proportion said they have forwarded
political news stories (84%), forwarded political e-mail (75%) or forwarded
links to blogs (70%). In addition, a large proportion of daily readers have
also taken political action at the specific suggestion of a political blog,
such as signing an online petition (63%), e-mailing a public official (57%) or
making a political contribution (31%).

Daily readers are more likely than non-readers to say they
make political donations. Of daily readers, 40% said they gave to a state or
local candidate in the past year and 61% gave in the presidential race in 2004.
Of the remaining sample, 26% gave in a local race and 42% gave in 2004. Prior
IPDI research has shown that donors are generally more likely to look at
political blogs.[1]

This entry was posted by Cheryl Contee on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.