Guest Post: The Rise and Fall of the New Zealand Christian Blogosphere
ScrubOne has gone back through the New Zealand blog rankings over the past year and documented the rise and fall of the Christan blogs to see if the launch of the MandM Top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings has had observable impact. (This guest post is part of open mic week(s))
A lot of people have noticed that the top 10 Christian blogs here on MandM are ranking higher in the general rankings over time. It’s been suggested that the rankings themselves might be responsible themselves for this phenomenon, by making more people aware of the Christian blogs out there.
So I thought I’d put that hypothesis to the test.
I used Tumeke! Ranking data to trace blogs over the past year. I noted the rank of the blogs included in the MandM rankings, from the time they were first used in those rankings, not when they first appeared on Tumeke!.
I used Tumeke! for several reasons.
- It’s more respected
- It’s been operating longer
- Halfdone rankings have tended to favour Christian blogs for some unknown reason. Thus the Tumeke! Rank becomes a “tougher” test of popularity
- Basically, I’m too lazy to do both!
The first issue we have is that the data is problematic. New blogs come on the scene, old blogs fall off. So I tweaked the data a bit.
- Removed MacDoctor – he scored very highly before being placed on the “Christian” list. I think most people would agree that him being a Christian isn’t the primary reason why people read his blog. So he’s not really
- Removed Backchat Café and NZ Debate, both of whom started and ended within the survey period.
Charting what’s left, we come up with this (I’ve divided the Max score by 10 to keep it in the scale).
So the number of Christian blogs has increased. Also, as the blog rankings have grown the lowest ranked blog has pushed out lower and lower – i.e. if 300 blogs are ranked, clearly the lowest ranked Christian blog is likely to be in the 200s. No surprises with either of those. The average looks interesting, but we need to dig further.
Here’s the 11 blogs that averaged the highest score.
Note the highest score in a Christian blog that didn’t make it onto this chart is 62. That was by Samuel Dennis back in November, so our method didn’t eliminate any good starters thus making the trend look better.
The most impressive improvements over the year have been MandM and the Beretta blog. Both have come from very uninspiring rankings to sweep into the top 40.
Contra Celsum also made some good gains. I’ve highlighted these blogs to make their movement easier to see.
Not all blogs gained during the year. Kiwi Polemicist slipped after almost making it to 60. The Briefing room dropped right off after February.
But what has really gotten the attention of those watching the Christian rankings is the number of blogs that are now in the top 50/60. This can be clearly seen in this chart, with a mere 3 in the top 40 at the beginning. Now however, there are 8, 5 of those being in the top 40. That’s all in spite of TBR’s dropping off the pace.
Some of us have suspected that this is due to improving scores. That’s partially true, with Beretta and MandM improving drastically, but mostly it’s been due to already good Christian blogs getting included in the stats, and other blogs such as MacDoctor and Keeping Stock identifying or being identified as Christian.
Speaking of MacDoctor, in spite of his exclusion from the analysis, he is the only one who consistently makes it into the Tumeke! top 20.
Something for us all to work on, eh?
In: Contributors, political, theology
