The Readers Talk Back - Results of STARtorialist blog reader survey

The following post was published on Research Media's blog this morning. Research Media is a communications agency that provides integrated creative services for the research sector.

What’s up with science blogs? I mean, why do people read them, anyway?

You might be surprised to know that a question as simple as this hasn’t been tackled by the science communication research community. But as any good writer knows, effective communication strategies involve knowing the audience. Who are they? What are they interested in? Why are they here (reading blogs vs. watching TV or reading newspapers)? What is their background and how knowledgeable are they about science already?

These are the types of questions I’m addressing with a new research project I’m spearheading with a colleague, Dr. Lance Porter, at Louisiana State University. Last year, I conducted a survey of science blogging practices that revealed all kinds of interesting things about over 600 science bloggers. I found out that science bloggers determine what they are going to blog about primarily by what they arepassionate about and what topics/stories they think they can add context to beyond what the traditional media is saying about them. I found that a majority of science bloggers write for a science-interested but non-specialist audience.

But much of what I found out regarding science bloggers’ practices begs the question: Who READS science blogs? Now that I know more about what motivates academics, science journalists and others to blog about science and whom they are writing for when they do, I’ve started to wonder whether people read science blogs for complimentary reasons. For bloggers who write to popularize science and make it fun, are their readers engaging with the content for entertainment and educational purposes? For bloggers who are writing to share research in their field, are their readers reading to say up with current research? In other words, is there match or mismatch between science bloggers’ goals and their readers’ motivations, and what does this mean?

We are preparing to launch our science blog readership survey next week with a randomly selected sample of over 40 science bloggers. The bloggers represent a great mix of independent and media-affiliated (Discover Magazine, PLOS One, Scientific American, etc.) blogs, featuring roughly equal numbers of male and female bloggers writing on a variety of scientific topics. Our survey looks great – I was lucky enough to be able to pilot it on STARtorialist, the fantastic astronomy-meets-fashion blog run by Emily Rice and Summer Ash.

 

When Emily and Summer approached me about surveying the readers of their Tumblr-based blog, I jumped on the opportunity to test my wider blog readership survey that launches next week. We just closed the STARtorialist reader survey, but we are already intrigued by the topline results. A total of 270 readers completed the survey, which while it isn’t representative provides a decent snapshot of STARtorialist readers from the past two weeks.

STARtorialist readers are overwhelmingly female (83%). They also indicate clicking through the fashion-related links on STARtorialist more so than the science-related links. STARtorialist’s fashion element also drew me in. It led me to purchase a beautiful pair of galaxy leggings last week for Halloween – score! Fascinatingly, a majority of the readers who responded to the survey indicated they read the blog every day or multiple times a week (65%). Granted, our sampling procedure selects for people who read the blog regularly (they had more chances of seeing the survey advertised), but this still indicates a very engaged reader base. These readers also predominantly follow the blog via Tumblr.

But most fascinating to me is WHY people read STARtorialist. In this blog readership survey, we are asking readers to indicate what drives them to continue reading a particular blog. STARtorialist readers predominantly indicated reading “for entertainment” (an agreement score of 4.38 out of 5), “because of the good writing,” (3.48 out of 5) and “for the authors’ perspective” (3.49 out of 5). These readers may be sophisticated users of science media, but they read this particular blog mostly just because… it’s fun!

STARtorialist readers also read “for information I don’t find in traditional news media” and “to keep up with current events in science,” but less so to follow scientific research, as an educational tool or for expert opinions. But STARtorialist readers, likely similar to other science blog readers, don’t tend to be your passive consumers of science. A majority of these readers indicated very often or often actively seeking out science-related information online. 80% of these readers follow science blogs other than STARtorialist.

We have yet to deep-dive into these results and pick them apart across other variables, but I’m excited to collect this kind of data for a random cross-section of science blogs. The readers of STARtorialist tend to be sophisticated users of science media, and yet they seek this blog out for entertainment, information and perspectives they don’t find elsewhere. It signals that Emily and Summer have created a niche and loyal reader base, but it’s younger and yet more science-interested than I might have guessed.

Emily, Summer and I also asked STARtorialist readers about their views of scientists and their gendered perceptions of science, but that is the topic of another blog post and an upcoming conference/research paper! For now, please join me and Lance Porter as we prepare to launch our wider science blog readership survey next week. We still need survey incentives, so if you are interested, head over to Experiment.com to show us some love: https://experiment.com/mysciblogreaders. We are giving out various perks, including science art, for project backers!

Dr. Paige Jarreau is a postdoctoral researcher at Louisiana State University, where she studies science communication in new media environments. She is also the blog manager for the science blog network SciLogs.com You can find her website at www.fromthelabbench.com, and follow her on Twitter @FromTheLabBench. For questions about the survey project, e-mail paigebjarreau@gmail.com.