There was a diary yesterday that remarked on the demographics of Dailykos as being overwhelmingly male, white, and over 50. I'd like to delve into why Dailykos is full of old, crusty white dudes shaking their fists at clouds while looking for their dentures stuck in the grass behind them.
That pleasant imagery of old, crusty toothless white dudes aside, here's a more serious take on why there isn't a huge representation of minorities, women, and youth on Dailykos. It all comes down to application of technology and generational differences when it comes to blogging. Over the past five years, there has been a major transition in blogging from the usual blogging format to the micro-blogging format for our youth.
Smartphones played a huge role in the shift to microblogging for those aged 18-29. For those who are not familiar with what microblogging is: it refers to quick status updates on Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media with the use of smartphones to connect with the larger world on the Internet.
Here's the survey from the Pew Research Center that goes into further detail on this generational issue:
The survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center, found a 14 percent drop in the number of teens who say they blog, down from 28 percent in 2006. Likewise, young adult bloggers aged 18-29 are down by nine percent since 2007.
However, even with this decline among young bloggers, 11 percent of adults aged 30 and older say they use blogs now, which is up from seven percent in 2007.
The interesting part is that as the blogging participation by young bloggers went down, it conversely went up for adults aged 30 and older. Aaron Smith, the research specialist for the Pew Research Center, explains why this is the case:
The increase in blogging by older adults is also easily explainable, Smith said.
“Typically, we see that when new technology comes along, young people are the early adopters of those technologies ... it then filters through the early adopters and becomes more prevalent among the population as a whole,” he said.
The Pew Research Center also has another interesting study on how minorities use the Internet, and I think it potentially explains the demographic problems we have here on Dailykos. It's an excellent study, and one in which marketers, political campaigns, and companies are taking notice of in their online outreach to minorities.
A new report released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project will surely spill over into arguments about broadband penetration in the United States, not to mention other debates. It says that African-Americans access the Internet via handheld devices more often than whites, for whom an online connection is more likely to come from an ISP-connected computer. "This means the digital divide between African Americans and white Americans diminishes when mobile use is taken into account," Pew says.
Pew's "Wireless Internet Use" survey was based on telephone interviews with 2,253 adults (people over 18) conducted in April and March. Merged with earlier surveys, it notes that the percentage of Americans who say they've used the Internet on a handheld is now at 32 percent, up by eight percent from December 2007. But while the share of white respondents who disclose that they've ever gone online this way has grown from 21 to 28 percent, among African Americans it has jumped from 29 to 48 percent. And among English-speaking Hispanics, from 38 to 47 percent.
On an average day, twenty nine percent of African-Americans access the internet on a handheld, according to the survey. What this does, Pew says, is even the gap between white and nonwhite Americans on broadband account fueled laptop/desktop access. White Americans hit the web using a telco/cable ISP connected computer by a significantly higher margin than African-Americans: 59 to 45 percent.
But the internet access rate for black users rises to 54 percent when mobile devices get factored into the mix. "The high level of activity among African Americans on mobile devices helps offset lower levels of access tools that have been traditional onramps to the internet, namely desktop computers, laptops, and home broadband connections," Pew concludes.
There is a lack of access to broadband in minority communities, which is why the use of smartphones to connect to the Internet has risen among minorities. It isn't just the African-American community that is connecting in this particular way, Hispanics are also connecting in this way.
Again, among African-Americans and Hispanics, these trends are more pronounced. Fifty-three percent of the former said accessing information is very important, and 22 percent said the same for sharing or posting. For Hispanics, the answers were respectively 54 and 24 percent.
For them, access to information on smartphones is more important than sharing information on these smartphones. The studies themselves make a very strong case for the use of mobile apps to reach out to minorities and youth. Progressive organizations and websites also should take heed of the demographic shift in the usage of the Internet.
At the present moment, Dailykos does not yet have a functioning mobile app. Even on the prior app, the browsing experience was very limited. For those who argue that a mobile version of this website should suffice---it doesn't. There has been an increasing trend towards mobile applications of websites, and it's a welcome trend from my point of view.
We would likely see an uptick in younger users if Dailykos had a mobile app that enabled them to comment, participate in groups, and use social media to share articles. It might take care of the present demographic problems here on Dailykos if the mobile app was marketed properly to young progressives and to minorities. Even with that said, I wonder if the current demographics and the issues being written about here might pose an obstacle to minorities and youth if they do not feel comfortable enough to put in their two cents if they feel that the site users are older than them, and have extensive experience in writing in-depth articles.
It might be a hard shift from the microblogging format they are used to on smartphones to the macroblogging format. As one person featured in the article above the jump, she wrote that she didn't have the time to read a long post or essay. Dailykos is geared towards the macroblogging format, and isn't set-up for the microblogging format.
So it brings up questions about the mobile app. Would it be best if the app didn't have a "post a diary" feature, but allowed for comments, post-sharing, and a common live feed with comments on posts like a Facebook wall feature? Those are the questions I'm mulling over.
It is very intriguing to think about the demographic changes in the use of the Internet via the use of smartphones. It makes sense that those who don't have broadband access that typically older, educated, and white Americans have, would turn to smartphones to access the Internet. It's certainly food for thought here.