Poll: Most Americans unfamiliar with blogs
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Though use of the Internet has become pervasive among Americans, a poll released Thursday finds that few computer users are tuned in to the blog phenomenon.
More than three-quarters of Americans -- 76 percent -- said they use the Internet, but only 26 percent said they were "very familiar" or "somewhat familiar" with blogs.
Blogs -- short for Web logs -- are personal diaries kept by thousands of people on a wide range of topics and posted on the Internet.
Just 7 percent of adults said they read blogs at least a few times per week, according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. Forty-eight percent said they never do.
But blogs have been credited with forcing the mainstream media to pay attention to issues they might otherwise have disregarded, such as the authenticity of a CBS News report that raised questions about President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the military.
Amid a clamor of blog postings, the network ultimately said it could not stand behind the story. (Full story)
The poll was based on telephone interviews of 1,008 American adults carried out February 25-27. It has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.
