And I think this acutally ties into the question of credit: being seen, read and commented on is also a type of credit, and since bloggers often cite each other, the gains of blogging are likely to be seen as bigger for the big blog languages (regardless of subject). Also, many researchers are used to communicating in English, so I suspect there is a cross-language recruitment as well, to the detriment of the non-English science blogosphere.

But many of the >2000 English-writing science bloggers are junior. There is still the separate issue of getting the professors and other senior researchers to blog. They already get recognition for their work, so the increased “awareness” credit for blogging is unlikely to sway them. Here, funding is perhaps a stronger argument.

Also, I think funding is a strong argument if you are a junior blogging researcher and want to get the approval of your supervisor or boss.

The benefits of blogging, on the other hand, are mainly visible to those who have already begun to blog. Perhaps the recruitment problem would be less if we could find a way to make the gains of blogging more visible?

But still, the growth in science blogging is desperately slow, at least in non-English universes, like the one I know (French-speaking) or maybe yours. Maybe scientists needs other arguments? Maybe there are something missing in the way the importance of Internet is communicated?