Results of Our Reader Survey I
Thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out our readership survey. Nearly 300 people did so, and the result is a rich dataset of feedback, suggestions, concerns, criticism and gratifyingly, a great deal of enthusiasm about Lawfare. Here is a summary, for those who are interested, of the results of the quantifiable questions—those which asked readers to check boxes. I have also included what I take to be the major action items that flow from those results.
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Thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out our readership survey. Nearly 300 people did so, and the result is a rich dataset of feedback, suggestions, concerns, criticism and gratifyingly, a great deal of enthusiasm about Lawfare. Here is a summary, for those who are interested, of the results of the quantifiable questions—those which asked readers to check boxes. I have also included what I take to be the major action items that flow from those results. I will do a separate post summarizing the many suggestions and critique we received in the open-ended questions.
First off, respondents read Lawfare a lot. On a 1-to-5 scale running between "very occasionally" and "multiple times per day," the plurality of respondents chose 4, and 88 percent of respondents chose either 3, 4 or 5. Nearly 20 percent of readers, in fact, report that they read the site multiple times per day. This is consistent with all of our perception of the Lawfare readership as particularly engaged with and devoted to the site.
If there is one feature of the blog that got a decided vote of no-confidence, it is the site's social media features. The overwhelming majority of readers report that they use these features never or rarely. This surprised me, since the Twitter feed is steadily growing and clearly routes a fair bit of traffic to the blog, and the Facebook page has a large number of "likes." The only explanation I can think of for the disparity between the observed data and the reader response is that these features may principally benefit those people who don't already read Lawfare regularly, while those who do read it don't use them much. Maintaining these features is easy, as they are largely automated, but this finding suggests to me that they may not merit any significant investment of our time--at least not as a service to existing readers. For example, the low interest among existing readers in our Twitter feed raises the question of whether we should be investing time in using that feed to distribute links to outside news sources, as we now do. This exercise may increase the value of our Twitter feed to non-Lawfare readers, but it doesn't seem to do much for our core audience.
I will have more to say anon on the more open-ended responses to the survey--some of which are lengthy and which I am still digesting.
Again, many thanks to those who took the time to give us their thoughts.
How often do you read Lawfare?
We are constantly trying to calibrate the volume of coverage--to find the right mix between a vibrant site and one that is overwhelming. Do you think the number of posts we publish each day is:
Similarly, in response to a question about how people use Lawfare, readers confirmed that they use the site for all of the major functions we envision:
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What do you use Lawfare for? (Please check all that apply) |
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While I was amused to see how many people use the site for entertainment, in some ways, the most important result here is that nearly half of respondents say they use it for research. This is a function that none of us envisioned when we created Lawfare. We have already taken steps to enhance Lawfare as a research tool, and we will be taking further steps in that direction over the coming months. The survey asked specifically about one such step we are contemplating, and the overwhelming results on that question further confirm my sense that research is an important reader activity for the site to support. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said they would use the wiki document library we are planning to create--and, even more remarkably, more than 40 percent of readers say that they would contribute material to such a project. Stay tuned on this.
In general, readers gave a strong vote of confidence to the major substantive focal points of the site--and the site’s major features. The surprising exception to this general rule--surprising, at least, to me--is the relative lack of reader excitement about The Lawfare Podcast--which only 14 percent of readers report especially valuing. Perhaps because I have so much fun producing the podcast, I had this grandiose image of legions of Lawfare readers listening to it on the Metro or at on the step machine at the gym. The survey result, however, raises the question of whether the listener base is small but committed, in which case the feature is worth continuing and growing, or whether it's small and shallow too, in which case we should probably rethink the concept itself. I would be interested to hear from people who have thoughts on the podcast--both those who are hooked on it and those who are not.
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Which of the following features and common areas of coverage on the site do you find of particular value (Check all that apply)? |
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Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.