Over three million Australians engaged with online journals, blogs and forums over the past year, new data by Roy Morgan Research has revealed.
In the 12 months to June 2016, a total of 3,024,000 Aussies aged 14 years and over (15 per cent) read or added comment to blogs or forums, or managed a blog themselves in an average four-week period.
Within the blogosphere, 1.7 million Aussies read or added comment to someone else’s online journal or blog, 1.2 million viewed or contributed to online forums, and 480,000 created or managed an online journal or blog themselves.
Newspaper publishers have also capitalised on people’s interest in blog content as a means to reach and engage audiences, according to Roy Morgan.
In an average four-week period, almost 1.1 million of us read or commented on an online newspaper blog, with some publishers’ digital audiences more keen than others.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine noted that the number of Australians engaging with blogs and forums online has grown consistently over the past four years.
“In an average four weeks, three million of us now read, add comments to or manage a blog or forum, up 28 per cent overall since 2012,” she said.
“All this growth in blogging activity has been driven by rising visitation via mobile phone. Newspaper blogs in particular have benefited from the rise of smartphones. Visitation via computer has been fairly flat since 2012, but quadrupled on mobiles. Nearly 1.1 million Australians read or add comment to newspaper blogs, and 52 per cent now do some or all of their newspaper blog reading and posting via mobile phone.
“With many newspapers now live blogging major events online and hosting blogs on a wide range of topics, mobiles have become the ideal device to refresh posts, scroll through updates and read the latest comments throughout the day.”
