The Pew Internet and American Life Project has just published Bloggers: A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers (PDF document).

In the study they note the breakdown of the reasons bloggers blog. They are as follows:

The Pew Internet Project blogger survey finds that the American blogosphere is dominated by those who use their blogs as personal journals. Most bloggers do not think of what they do as journalism.

Most bloggers say they cover a lot of different topics, but when asked to choose one main topic, 37% of bloggers cite —my life and experiences— as a primary topic of their blog. Politics and government ran a very distant second with 11% of bloggers citing those issues of public life as the main subject of their blog.

Entertainment-related topics were the next most popular blog-type, with 7% of bloggers, followed by sports (6%), general news and current events (5%), business (5%), technology (4%), religion, spirituality or faith (2%), a specific hobby or a health problem or illness (each comprising 1% of bloggers). Other topics mentioned include opinions, volunteering, education, photography, causes and passions, and organizations.

Cool, I’m part of the 2%. While 2% seems small as a percentage, in real numbers it represents 2% of 12 million bloggers or 240,000 bloggers blogging on religion and spirituality.