Aug 01 2007
How White and Male is the Web?
The United States Congress is 84% male. And 84% white. Whether that is a representation of the people they serve (and whether interests are ably represented, unaligned as electees are with the race, gender and class of their constituents) has been debated for as long a white men have dominated governing bodies, though that discussion tends to occur outside of deliberative chambers.
Now that public discourse on the important matters of the day takes place online, the magical democratizing power of the internet has transformed the world into an egalitarian utopia where every idea is represented… where thoughtful discourse breaks the sound bite barrier of talking head TV… where where everyone has a voice… –well everyone with enough disposable income to afford high speed access, a computer and copious leisure time to surf, spout off, post inane videos and buy porn.
That pretty much means white guys.
Traditional print and television news organizations haven’t been known as havens for “unrepresented” folks standing outside; looking nearly as white and male as our legislators when taking a top down view. Does the “new” online news media look any more diverse? Let’s take a quick look at The Huffington Post.
A tally of The Huffington Post’s blog posts from July 30th and July 31st 2007 reveals:
In two days, 69% of all blog posts (91 of 131) were by male writers.
One half of all posts (66 of 131) were in the POLITICS category.
- 79% of posts tagged POLITICS (52 of 66) were by male writers
- 83% of BUSINESS posts (5 of 6) were by male writers
- 83% of ENTERTAINMENT (10 of 12) posts were by male writers
- 66% of MEDIA posts (12 of 18) were by male writers
- 41% of LIVING NOW posts (12 of 29) were by male writers
Look again at the picture. Is this the new-old look of progressive online media? I think that it’s safe to say that compared to Congress’ figures (8% African American, 5% Hispanic) that The Huffington Post, though providing more examples of ethnic variety (1 Native American, 1 Libyan born writer to pull a couple from several), is overall not any more representative of the US population than our elected officials.
Although maligned, the 2000 Census figures stand as one measure of racial proportions in the United States:
- 69.1% White
- 12.7 Hispanic
- 12.3 African American
- 3.7 Asian
- 2.4 Mutli-racial
A Neilsen Net Ratings report offers this:
The overall unique audience to the top 10 online newspapers skewed male, with 60 percent men and 40 percent women. Among newspaper blog pages, this skew intensified, with 66 percent men and 34 percent women.
Neilsen expects the gap to widen. That’s HuffPo’s audience they’re talking about. Maybe they’re right on target with 69% of all blogs entries posted by males. And with 79% of the political posts penned by men, Congress seems appropriately covered as well. If most assumptions are right about the makeup of affluent web users, maybe the paleness is on target, too.
The Huffington Post continues it’s impressive growth; widely reported (everyone’s reading HP press releases, no doubt) to attract over 3 million unique visitors and 70 million page views a day. They have made moves toward acting like a more traditional news outlet while preserving their progressive blogger cred; presumably an advantage over offline publishers venturing online who know how to manage a print run but are uncomfortable with the feral world of user comments and unleashed bloggers.
Commerce is now firmly rooted in the web and those with profit interests are targeting the majority of web users: white guys with money. Publishers of all types of media are now pursuing this prized demographic. You can talk about long tails and niches, but the reality is that the major information portals are lenses colored by those who not only provide focus but choose the subject. Does diversity among these gatekeepers matter in the online world where the freeing power of anonymity was supposed to erase our desire to categorize and bring people of all races, creeds, classes and genders together on a big happy playground of the willfully blind? Darn that hyped up web; it’s merely another version of the real world.
How white and male is the web? Look at the picture above again. Is that a mirror? You tell me.
Interesting observations. We’ve come a long way since the 60’s but in many ways as you point we haven’t Were all those articles a few months back about whether America would elect a woman or a black male to president …mainly written by white men?
It could be more that cultural attitudes have indeed changed but the system and structure have not. What it takes to get to elected office, who has more free time in working families….maybe that could be something that still needs to catch up with changing views of diversity.
Good article!