Interesting points:
• Women consistently express more interest in stories about weather, health and safely, natural disasters, crime and celebrity news
• Men tend to be more interested in international affairs, Washington news and sports
• In five weekly news interest surveys in 2008, 37% of men and 32% of women say they have followed campaign news very closely
• While women continue to show more interest in local and community news - where they comprise 58% of the audience - plenty are also focused in global events
• Women's interest is heightened if key figures were also women (ex: Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination)
• 24% of men and 19% of women say they read political blogs regularly
• Women and men post comments to blogs in similar proportions
• "In many ways the blogosphere is a place where a woman's voice is equal to a man's. A Google search doesn't discriminate between a blog by Catherine or by Joe" - Catherine Morgan
• Women have generally expressed less interest in politics and don't run for office as often as men do
• But there is a paradox: there is a high correlation between education and political literacy and interest in politics, and women have outnumbered men as college students for quite a while. Women are also more likely to be political science majors than men. And women vote more than men! So is there a gap in our understanding of women and political engagement?
• The author suggests that, to close this gap, perhaps women should continue to expand their media choices beyond the traditional attachment to network TV programming. Her solution therefore is not looking to the media to create change but for the women themselves to make that change by becoming a part of the blogging world.
This article was a good recap of what we read last week, with an interesting conclusion about the significance and potential of the so-called blogosphere.
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