Professor Ying Chan starts us off with a reminder of just how action packed 2008 has been, and it’s only halfway through.

Originally the program was for Deborah Fallows to talk about recent Pew findings, and Soong was going to give a response-analysis, but the program has changed. Soong will be presenting “A Psychographic Segmentation of Chinese Bloggers”, and then Fallows will be comparing the post-Sichuan earthquake Internet behavior in China to post-9/11 Internet behavior in the U.S.

Soong’s work is on the different segments of the China blogosphere. Instead of examining divisions based on age, gender or blogging behavior, but rather attitudes and styles. The study he based this on is the China Media Monitoring Study (CMMS), conducted in 2007 with nearly 150,000 interviews door-to-door in 30 cities across the country.

The largest segments on age and sex who responded “yes” to whether they used the Internet in the past 6 months are, unsurprisingly, men and women between 20-30. The wealthier and/or more educated you are, the more likely you are to be an Internet user. We all know this already.

Less than 1% of the population sample responded “yes” to blogging in the last 6 months. Again, they are predominantly young, wealthy, educated – slightly more women than men, unlike the numbers for general Internet use. The highest incidence by city was in mid-sized cities, such as Hangzhou and Ningbo.

Bloggers are far more likely to visit the major web portals than average users, and read other blogs. Common tropes about Chinese bloggers are that they are young wealthy and more engaged in the Internet. But then there are two theories: they are political, volatile and aggressive, or they are apolitical, apathetic and passive. They can’t both be true.

Interviewees were asked to agree or disagree with a series of statements, e.g. do you buy the latest technology, do you like to eat fast food, etc.

General users enjoy Western fast food, like a life of challenge, keep up with latest fashions, be regarded as a leader. Generally lower agreement on respecting traditional customs and belief, family being more imporant than career.

Bloggers tend to rank even higher than general users in eating Western fast food (36% vs. 23%), like to pursue a life of challenge (54% vs 59%), “how I spend my time is more important than the money I make, chatting and being regarded as a leader. They agreed even less on having a lasting relationship with one partner, getting involved in local issues, worrying about violence and crime, respecting traditional customs (64% general population agree, 61% Net users, 50% for bloggers).

Bloggers break into segments: the first one seems fairly anti-social (don’t believe what others say, last to buy latest tech, won’t buy environmentally friendly products), the second seems more influenced by others (follows fashion trends, buys latest gear, but do draw a line about women belonging at home and traditional customs). Segment 3, finally, appreciate brands that support public causes (general population 59%, net users 61%, bloggers 58%, segment 1 33%, segment 2 50%, segment 3 83%), consider time more valuable than money, willing to volunteer, pay more for environmental products and want to stand out as individuals.

So segment 3 are those we would expect are most likely to, say, spring into action in the event of an earthquake. This data shows some of the variations in bloggers, particularly what may be called a progressive group (segment 3) and could become a civil force in events such as Wenchuan, though the study was done pre-earthquake.

This entry was posted Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Session 3. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.