Download - Blogging and the public sphere Life Online Bruce Ferwerda Tommy van der Vorst 31 maart 2010

Blogging and the public sphere

Life Online

Bruce Ferwerda

Tommy van der Vorst

31 maart 2010

In this presentation

• Who are those bloggers?• Lenhart & Fox (2006): A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers

• What do bloggers do?• McKenna & Pole (2007): What do bloggers do: an average day on an

average political blog

• The power of weblogs• Drezner & Farell (2007): Blogs, politics and power

• Interactions among bloggers: the blogosphere• Hargittai, Gallo & Kane (2007): Cross-ideological discussions among

conservative and liberal bloggers

/ Innovation Sciences PAGE 218-04-23

Weblogs


Who are those bloggers?

Let’s throw in some statistics...



• Blogging is bringing new voices to the online world

Lenhart & Fox conducted a survey in the US:• 54% of bloggers have never published anywhere else

• 8% of internet users maintains a blog

• 39% read blogs

• Various topics & motives for blogging

• High percentage of bloggers stopafter a while



• The blogging population:

• Is young (54% is <30)

• Consists of as many women as men

• Mostly in urban/suburban areas (13% in rural areas)

• Less likely to be white than average internet user



Blogs can be personal or be a ‘public endeavour’:

• 55% of bloggers use a pseudonym

• For 84%, blogging is a hobby or “something I do, but not something a spend a lot of time on”

• 59% spend just one or two hours per week maintaining their blog

• 52% blog mostly for themselves, not for an audience; 32% blog mostly for their audience

(Why blog ‘just for yourself’?)



Blogging vs. Journalism:

• 34% consider their blog a form of journalism

• 57% include links to original sources ‘often’


What do bloggers do?

• McKenna & Pole (2007): exploratory empirical study• How do political bloggers use their blogs

Categorization of blogging activities:• Informer activities• Watchdog activities (“keeping an eye on mainstream media”)• Political activities• Philantropic activities



Findings• average blogger ≠ average citizen

(Demographics differ from Lenhart & Fox: more whites, more males)

• Informer activities



Findings• Watchdog activities

• 80% of bloggers notify their readers about bias or omissions in the media

• Close second to informing activities

• Bloggers do not trust mainstream media

• But also rely on it!

• Blogging as ‘first-rate journalism’ in countries without free press or in the case of events (i.e. Hurricane Katrina)



Findings• Political activities: 2/3 of bloggers want to engage

people• They want you:



Findings• Philantropic activities

• Asking readers to donate (44%)

− (interestingly, this is lower than the 66% donators in the US)

• Rarely pursued activity (i.e. not the ‘core business’)


The power of weblogs

Drezner & Farell (2007) Introduction:− Blogs, politics and power: a special issue of Public Choice

•Are blogs indeed important to politics?•Do they have a beneficial or harmful effect?

/ name of department PAGE 1618-04-23


Do blogs affect politics?•Blogs can be important

• More important as reactors to the media than independent agenda setters

•When does blogs have political power?•Least trusted source of news

• (BBC/Reuters/Media Center 2006)



Are blogs good for politics?•Ongoing discussion•Cyberapartheid

• “... increasing people’s ability to hear echoes of their own voices and to wall themselves off from others.” (Sunstein 2001, p.49)

•Linking & comments


Interactions among bloggers

Hargittai, Gallo & Kane (2007)− Cross-ideological discussions among conservative and liberal bloggers

Do people abandon the reading of dissenting political opinions in favor of material that is closely aligned with their own ideological position?



• H1• Blogs are more likely to link to blogs that match their

ideological persuasion

• H2• The amount of cross-ideological linking among blogs

wille decline over time

Hargittai, Gallo & Kane (2007)



Cross-ideological linkages in the political blogosphere

•Blogroll connections• 27% presented in the whole network

• 91% resemble ideological positions

• 9% different viewpoints



Cross-ideological linkages in the political blogosphere

•Links in posts• More likely to link to ideological blogs

• 12% conservative liberal

• 16% liberal conservative



• H1• Blogs are more likely to link to blogs that match their

ideological persuasion

• H2• The amount of cross-ideological linking among blogs

wille decline over time


Download - Blogging and the public sphere Life Online Bruce Ferwerda Tommy van der Vorst 31 maart 2010

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