Nov

3

How the Pew Poll Is Being Covered and Why the Poll is BS

November 3, 2005 |

I have been reading Pew Internet Poll released today. As I said in my comment earlier, something just didn’t ring true about it. I work with teenagers every day and only one out of twenty keeps a blog; and it has been like that for about the last year. According to the poll, three in five should be ‘creating online content.’ But lets look at the actual questions being asked and the answers:
 

K31

I’m going to read another short list of activities people sometimes do online. Please tell me whether you ever do each one, or not. Do you ever…?

Based on online teens [N=971]

a Create or work on your own online journal or weblog8

YES 19 % NO 81% DON’T KNOW/REFUSED 0%

Okay - nothing weird here. A fifth of students keeps a blog. I do wonder though for how long they stay interested in it.
 
The next question asks how many teens create or work on their own webpage and the statistics are about the same (22 yes /78 no).
 
But here is a question that got me and that has received some attention:

Create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including friends, groups you belong to, or for school assignments: 37% yes / 63% no

Now here is what the AP made out of this:

Nearly three in five school-age teens with Internet access have created online content, including Web pages with artwork, photos and stories — and about a fifth have their own blogs, which also allow friends and other readers to create feedback postings.

But look at the question - why did they add school assignments in there? That’s not the same as creating a blog for a friend. And looking through the report, there is no number in it that even comes close to 3 out of 5. This one, with 37% is the highest I could find. So unless you assume that those creating content for others are a completely different group for those who create their own blogs, these numbers don’t add up to 3 out of 5. If you then subtract the number of those who only created pages because a school assignment said so, the numbers probably come down to maybe 30% or even less.

Of those who have their own blogs, 42% update it ‘every few weeks’ or ‘less often.’ If those teenagers I know what say that to me, I would interpret it as: never. Those who read blogs, answer with about the same numbers. Students who read blogs, also only tend to read the blogs of people they know (62%).

Then, there is a question about remixing content which got some mainstream attention (notice how the NYT managed to find a boy who really remixes music). There is no definition in the study for what is meant by that, but here is the question with results:

(Do you ever) Take material you find online—like songs, text or images—and remix it into your own artistic creation? Results: 19% yes; 81% no

Lets first of all remember that remixing a song is a bit more of a technical challenge of ‘remixing text,’ whatever may be meant by that. How does one remix images? Add text to it to make it funny? Basically, this question makes no sense whatsoever.

Next, there is a question on whether teenagers post things online “such as [their] own artwork, photos, stories or videos.” Again, the qualitative difference between those items is just staggering. 33% answered yes. Of course they did - how tough is it to IM a photo from a digital camera to a friend? That does not constitute any creative process.

Now, with all this in mind, read the New York Times story on this. They cite

57 percent of all teenagers between 12 and 17 who are active online - about 12 million - create digital content, from building Web pages to sharing original artwork, photos and stories to remixing content found elsewhere on the Web. Some 20 percent publish their own Web logs.

I searched the study - the number 57 appears twice: the number of students who don’t shop online and those who look online for information about colleges. Very creative NYT.

Read the report - draw your own conclusions - but to me, it seems as if the blogging part has been over hyped by the media and by Pew, because nothing else in the study stood out. Most of the questions asked were about IM usage anyway, and not much has changed here over the last few years, while blogging is such a hot topic.

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