Mapping the blogosphere: Professional and citizen-based media in the global news arena, by Stephen Reese

1) Research topic and researcher(s): Mapping the blogosphere: Professional and citizen-based media in the global news arena, by Stephen Reese, et.al. in Journalism, 8 (3), pp. 235-261. Retrieved from Communication and Media Complete, on Feb. 13, 2008.

2) Rationale of the study:

To discover how the phenomenon of blogs (mainly intended as citizen-based news sources) and their extension (i.e. the so called blogosphere) affect the boundaries of the public sphere from the (1) journalistic, (2) political and (3) geographic point of view.

In particular the study is aimed at

1. discovering how ‘professional’ media and blogs interact and, in particular, how the latter influence the traditional news sources.

2. evaluating the effects of the blogosphere on the political behaviour of citizens (polarization or uniformity?)

3. establishing the capacity of the blogosphere to overcome national boundaries.

3) Literature review:

As far as the theories underlying Reese’s study are concerned, I have hereby listed the most important assumptions quoting, when needed, the sources.

* The author develops his study starting from Held’s definition of increasing globalized networks as ‘overlapping communities of fate’ (2004).

* That is why he believes that the blogosphere should be analyzed ‘within the larger context of changing global news arena’ in which people seem not to be encouraged to look beyond their national boundaries.

* One of the effects of this more interconnected world seems to be the undermining of old scheme of audience-news providers relation (so called ‘deterritorialization’ of news)

* In particular, the relationship between press and national community seems to be called into question.

* Thus, the author in interested also in the political effects of this change, since it has been argued that transnational forms of political participation have moved to a global public sphere (Morris and Waisbord,2001) and that this has ‘a natural relationship with democracy’ (Giddens, 2000)

* The so called blogosphere (from Habermas’ concept of ‘public sphere’) is a way of thinking the social geography of public communication.

* This conversation of the public has been particularly encouraged, according to Carey (1989) by journalism.

* But where traditionally journalism was charged with mediating public voices, citizens can now hold those conversations among each other; moreover public can now also interact with journalists themselves.

* Thus news practices are changing, becoming more and more interactive (Deuze, 2003)

* Therefore globalization has produced a ‘broader and more fluid journalistic conversation, a new global public sphere with shifting boundaries’.

* The blogosphere might be seen as complementary to professional journalism, in fact e.g. in her analysis of blogs targeting the war in Iraq Wall (2005) discovered that the main part of ‘warblogs’ depended a lot on the traditional professional media.

* From the political point of view, some studies (Adamic and Glance, 2005; Welsch, 2005) suggest that blogosphere increase the polarization of the audience and that bloggers of the same ideal community link to each other in a cycle of ‘mutual affirmation’ (Wall, 2005)

4) Research method:

A combination between content analysis of web networks (blogs’ posts and newstories) and statistical analysis of different variables such as political affiliation of the source, geographic position of the source or type of post published.

5) Subject of study:

The study has been focused on six weblogs concerning news and politics (because of the goals of the research). These six gatekeepers of the news and political commentary blogosphere have been selected both from the liberal and conservative affiliation, and their selection has been based on their authoritative reputation in the blogging communities. These blogs are (LIBERAL) Tallong Points Memo, Atrios, Daily Kos, (CONSERVATIVE) Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan and Little Green Footballs.

Time frame: these six have been monitored during one week (from 6 to 13 February 2005), it might be useful to underline that the week selected was devoid of any major news stories and this to avoid that atypical news could influence the result of the study.

The author analyzed a total of 410 posts across the six (Tallong Points Memo 83, Atrios 61, Daily Kos 54, Instapundit 114, Andrew Sullivan 23 and Little Green Footballs 75).

6) Research finding:

About the relation between traditional media and the blogosphere:

• Contrary to popular speculation, the research shows that most of blog posts do not provide original information: either assemble material from other sources, or conduct some analysis on such material. Only a little number of posts revealed to be an on-the-scene observation. 33.5% of the references of the posts monitored are to other blogs, instead close to half of references are to professional news media. That means that traditional news media and professional journalism still have an important role in the global network.
• About how blogs link to other sites, professional news is references often and taken at face value and used to develop further discussion. That is way blogs should be perceived as complementary to traditional news media: they, indeed spread information, getting more readers involved and interested in news provided by medias.
• About the subjects, the authors of these blogs and newstories are for one half citizens and for the other half they are affiliated with the professional news media. Even though the author recognizes that it is hard to determine a demarcations line between ‘professional’ and simple citizens bloggers

About the relation between blogosphere and political behaviour:

• The research provide a prove of the so called ‘echo-chamber’ effect: liberal blogs are likely to link to blogs of their same political affiliation, and vice versa for the conservative.
• Nevertheless, almost half of the blogs seem to lead to non-political or non-partisan sites thus blogs have actually a role in readers to a broader base of news, non necessarily oriented from the political point of view.

About the capacity of shifting national boundaries:

• Even if theoretically blogs should and could link to other web realities with no regard to national location, the evidence of the research shows that US blogs have not begun to reach much farther than their own national boundaries. Nevertheless, the introduction of ‘global’ sources, e.g. Reuters, is a sign of gradual change towards a locationless blogosphere.
• About this topic, however, I think it is important to remember how difficult it is to identify what should be considered a national or non-national web-based reality. In the article, the author, indeed, has highlighted this obstacle.

7) My position on this scholarly essay

This article is very interesting in the topic, even if the detailed description of the research method has made it a little difficult to follow. The author investigates on how much the digital age is effectively affecting not only our way of perceiving reality, but also the way in which we can interact with it. I have always wondered about how much the freedom of expression allowed by the internet would revolutionize our way of creating and receiving news, but I had never found a study on the subject before.

I think that the research method adopted has been as much objective as possible. Nevertheless I would like to know what will be the result of the research for another country, in which the so called ‘traditional news sources’ do not have the reputation of being particularly reliable. It is the case, for example, of government owned mass media and I am referring to my country, Italy, but I could refer to any other country in which the medias are not considered sufficiently objective. I guess that in that case the capacity of blogs to overcome geographic boundaries would be much higher than the one analysed by Reese.

This is why I strongly believe that the internet and the ‘blogosphere’ is a way to increase the consciousness of citizens about the reality they live in and the methods to improve it.