I Blog, Therefore I Am

Are bloggers reporters? 



There is no easy answer, largely because the definition of reporter is fluid. Leighly suggests that reporters may be "neutral adversaries" of the public, meaning that in order to be reporters, bloggers must deliver new information to their audience. Zimmerman observes that Bloggers follow the pattern of news covered by the MSM, casting doubt on the functionality of Bloggers in this particular role. Shifting gears, if reporters are made in the mold of what Leighly terms "reporters of the objective fact", then blogs need credibility (as well as an ability to access new information in the first place, a claim already weakened by Zimmerman).  Sunstein casts doubt on this claim. The outlook for Bloggers for these models of Journalism appears bleak.

The fortunes of Bloggers take a turn for the better if we change the definition of Journalism to "public advocate". In this case, Woodly provides excellent theories (although not the numbers to back up her claims) as to why Bloggers fill the void created by the (alleged) failure of the MSM in this particular role.

Blogs as Neutral adversaries: Do Blogs uncover new information?

Zimmerman points out that Bloggers march in lockstep with the MSM in regards to the stories they cover.

Bloggers, as a whole, appear worse at covering developing nations than mainstream news, suggesting that bloggers in developing nations may find it hard to win recognition from their fellows in the North. It’s hard to pin this down statistically as a comparison between Blogpulse blogs and Google News data is not entirely fair: many of the blogs tracked by Blogpulse are diaries, which we would not expect to regularly reflect on interna- tional news. Comparisons of top blogs on Technorati or Blogpulse, rather than the whole setof blogs, might reveal different results. Early research on Daypop, a now-defunct catalog of 40,000 top blogs, suggested more focus on developing nations in top blogs than in the larger blogset tracked by Blogpulse and Technorati.

There is also evidence that bloggers will cover stories pertinent to the developing world if they are adequately primed by mainstream media coverage of the event. Research commis- sioned by AlertNet, a nonprofit arm of Reuters, indicated that coverage of the Indian Ocean Tsunami dwarfed coverage of ten other pressing humanitarian stories (Jones 2005)—the ten “forgotten” stories put together received only 78% of the coverage the tsunami received. A rough parallel study, using data from Blogpulse and keywords designed to approximate the AlertNet searches,20 revealed that coverage of the tsunami in the blogosphere dwarfed coverage of the ten “forgotten” stories to an even greater degree than in mainstream media— bloggers wrote 39% as many stories about the forgotten stories as about the tsunami.

Their sensitivity to priming suggests that Bloggers currently exist as a reaction to the the MSM, and not as a replacement. As with most of the material in the special edition of Public Opinion, there is little in the way of numbers to challenge this theory or substantiate it. Its should be noted that examples of Blogs breaking stories do exist, such as that of CBSgate. However, even this example of Bloggers influncing the news cycle was a reaction to a story brought by the MSM.

The Reporter of Objective Fact: Are Blogs credible?

Sunstein suggests that Blogs may have credibilty because of their sheer mass:

Hayek’s central point is that the best solution comes from the price system. His claim is that in a system in which knowledge of relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices act as an astonishingly concise and accurate coordinating and signaling device. They incorporate that dispersed knowledge and in a sense also publicize it, because the price itself operates as a signal to all. At the same time, the price system has a wonderfully automatic quality, particularly in its capacity to respond to change. If fresh information shows that a product—a television, a car, a watch—doesn’t always work, people’s demand for it will rapidly fall, and so too the price. And when a commodity suddenly becomes more scarce, its users must respond to that fact. The market works remarkably well as a whole, not because any participant can see all its features, but because the relevant information is communicated to everyone through prices.

However, Samson notes that a prequisite to this phenomenon is that all of the individual components share information.  This is not the case in the Blogosphere.  In fact, Samson notes the credibility problem grows worse as political activists stay within Blogs that agree to their particular political beliefs.

In light of this evidence, it should be clear that the Habermasian view of the blogosphere faces a particular problem if people are reading blogs that conform to their own preexisting beliefs. If this is so, the truth is not likely to emerge, and polarization is nearly inevitable. Liberals, reading liberal blogs, will end up more liberal; conservatives will become more conservative if they restrict themselves to conservative blogs. It is reasonable to speculate that the Colorado experiment finds itself replicated in the blogosphere every day, with poten- tially harmful results. People sometimes go to extremes simply because they are consulting others who think as they do. The rise of blogs makes it all the easier for people to live in echo chambers of their own design. Indeed some bloggers, and many readers of blogs, live in information cocoons. Shared identities are often salient on the blogosphere, in a way that makes polarization both more likely and more likely to be large. 

Without the needed cross-exchange, bloggers lose their credibility and with it their ability to be reporter of objective fact.

The Public Advocate: Can Bloggers inspire public discussion as advocates of the public?

In the public advocate model, the media is part of a larger discussion between the public and government.  A symptom of a healthy public advocacy media system is the the level of voter participation it inspires.  Woodly notes that 4 criteria prevent the MSM from motivating increased voter participation:

The increasingly anemic interest of most Americans in politics is certainly not all the fault of news media, but communications scholars have long noted that the news itself is ailing, not only by the standards of the democratic hope for the free press, but also by the professional expectations which developed at the turn of the last century. The roots and characteristics of the news media’s condition are attributed to different causes depend- ing on the focus of the study, but there seem to be four major areas that are consistently noted as problematic. First, the news is biased toward elite opinion, especially White House opinion. This bias is not necessarily the result of a normative preference for the opinions of officials, but instead the consequence of a number of constraints and standard operating procedures that are characteristic of the modern press (Tuchman 1978; Gans 1979; Bennett 1983; Entman 2004, 1989). Second, the presentation of the news is increasingly episodic and sensational. Michael Delli Carpini and Bruce Williams have referred to thisphenomenon as the rise of “infotainment”: the increased centralization, nationalization, economic motivation and entertainment orientation of public affairs media (Carpini and Williams 2001). Third, the professional ideology of American journalists, which holds sacred the idea that “objectivity” is the chief guiding principle of news reporting, may para- doxically prevent journalists from adequately reflecting reality. Fourth and finally, the mass reach of news is complicated by the consolidated ownership of media outlets, which dimin- ishes the diversity of news content that is produced (McChesney 1997; 2004).

Woodsly demonstrates that Blogging avoids these four pitfalls. Blogs avoid "elite bias"....

Not only is the form of the information that blogs make available distinct from that of
traditional news media but so is the substance. Remember, the content of traditional media is limited by elite bias, the necessity of attention-grabbing presentation, the professional ethic of objectivity and the conglomeration of corporate ownership. Blogs do not share traditional media’s elite bias. While it cannot be said that bloggers avoid focusing on the pronouncements of officials in their content, it is the case that bloggers lack the objectivity-based credibility structure and financial constraints that often limit the depth and scope of news in traditional media. While official statements might inspire attention to a particular subject, the content of those statements does not act as a boundary on inquiry or commentary. One of the reasons for the development of this norm might be a question of access. Unlike top mainstream journalists, most bloggers do not have, or are only just acquiring the insider status required to talk to high ranking officials. Most blog posts simply could not be made up of original quotes from “both” official sides. For this reason, bloggers tend to ask questions and make arguments by examining public facts or engaging with non-elite viewpoints that have been left out of traditional coverage in favor of elite he-said-she said.

..., the quicksand of soft news,...

Blogs can also avoid the “infotainment” trap. While it cannot be said that blogs are in- vulnerable to gossip and fads, it is the case that political blog posts do not face the same pressures that lead traditional media into the infotainment trap. Even if the blogger posts only a few lines to highlight an aspect of a political phenomenon, those short posts can and often do engender extended discussion, either through the enabled comments section or through additional posts where the author responds to and incorporates emailed information s/he has received. The assertion that blogs are more likely than traditional media to present information thematically (or, in context) might seem counter-intuitive, however, one of the advantages of blogs as a form is that bloggers can update frequently without sacrificing depth of discussion. Since blogs are only partly constituted by the thoughts of the author, blog readers are free to continue to carry on discussion and make inquiries about any recent post that suits their interest or speaks to their expertise. In this way, the speed or brevity with which subjects are presented for discussion does not fundamentally compromise the thoroughness with which the topic can be discussed.

..., can be as biased as they want to be,...

Since the construction of credibility in the blogosphere is not based on access to or validation from officials, there is also little need to avoid charges of bias. While one of the major tenets of professional journalism is neutral objectivity, bloggers often frankly disclose their political leanings and affections, eschewing the dictate that equates analytical balance with ideological innocence. Since there is no prohibition against making political allegiances and positions known, the substance of blog posts, unlike the content of articles or broadcast news stories, can and often does take the form of critical appraisal instead of objective reportage.

... and don't have to make money:

The final and most obvious difference between blogs and traditional news media is that blogs are so inexpensive to produce that they need not depend on patrons, corporations or ad revenue to enable and insure their existence. While it is becoming more common for bloggers that sustain high traffic to sell ad space, the vast majority of political bloggers derive little or no income from what is necessarily a part-time endeavor. Bloggers do not solicit for advertisers out of necessity so when they do sell ad space they may pick and chose advertising content. This means that ad content on blogs often conforms to their reader’s sympathy and interest. In traditional media this relationship is reversed.

Blogs are free from the restrictions of the MSM. The inevitable result is that people say what they want to say and hear what they want to hear. They can feel powerful and/or feel satisfied in the discovery a fellow ideological community. Both of these emotions lead to greater political participation. [Hopefully, later in the week part 2 of this post, The Blog For America will be used as a case study that illustrates these phenomena].



It emerges that the MSM and the blogosphere complement each other. Where blogs lack the ability to be neutral adveseraies and reporters of objective fact, the MSM (in theory) has the resources to ensure these media models are fulfilled. And where the MSM is boxed in by factors that limit the range of its content and analysis, blogs pick up the slack.