tech, media & politics

Examining political influence of elites v. nonelites on YouTube

2011-10-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

Just heard that New Media & Society has accepted a paper I co-authored with Michael Beam, Kristen Landreville, and Nick Geidner. I blogged about this research here.

In this project, we explored several claims about the democratizing potential of the Internet and extended gatekeeping theory into user-generated content (UGC) domain. A quantitative content analysis of the most popular YouTube political news videos during the 2008 presidential election was conducted to investigate the degree to which nonelites were able to partake in mainstream public discourse. We found that elites dominated first and second filters (news sourcing and news production) in the flow of online news, while nonelites dominated the third filter (news distribution). These results suggest that an update to the traditional gatekeeping model is needed to reflect the realities of today’s user-driven communication environment.

Here's an abstract.

Update: I'm currently planning a follow-up study in which the same data will be collected in 2012 presidential election. This will provide longitudinal data (2008 and 2012) and help develop more authoritative insights into the issue of elite-nonelite political power struggle online.

Technological determinism v. social constructivism: A false dichotomy in individual-level communication-effects research?

2011-10-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

In my new project (that builds upon my dissertation and Communication Theory paper), I will be experimentally testing how usage of various UGC affordances (e.g., manipulability, customizability) interacts with non-technological factors (e.g., types of users, types of uses) in producing effects on important political outcomes (e.g., political participation, political knowledge, depth of political information processing).

I am attempting to identify the appropriate role of ICTs in the individual-level communication-effects research, especially in context of political communication. More broadly, this project deals with technology as a causal agent, and with how technology interacts with social, psychological, and other factors to produce various important effects. Which puts this research right in the middle of the dispute between proponents of technological determinism and social constructivism. I find this dispute to be more political (e.g., "our perspective is better, and it should dominate the study of ICTs") than intellectual (e.g., "here are reasons why our perspective is objectively superior than yours for achieving these specific goals"). My reading of the literature on this dispute suggests that both camps are wrong in not acknowledging the following: (1) Both, technological and non-technological factors, matter; (2) Both produce important main and interactive effects, as well as direct and indirect effects; (3) Both matter to larger or smaller extent in different contexts (in other words, comparative effect sizes of tech v. non-tech factors differ across contexts).

Another criticism of technological determinism and social constructivism, is as follows: Technology determinists claim that technology is the most important causal factor that is driving history, whereas social constructivists say technology is much less important causal factor than human, cultural, social, economic, and other factors. Neither claim is falsifiable, from the perspective of social-scientific empirical research. Social constructivists and tech determinists are using historical analysis or case studies to talk about technology’s “effects” and about comparative “effect sizes”!! To prove causality and determine effect sizes one needs experiments, as any introductory-level methods textbook informs us.

In this project, I'll try to deal with some of these conceptual/methodological issues and offer a way to move beyond the unproductive tech determinism v. social constructivism debate.

Update: Just received a small grant from New Mexico State University to get going on this project. This is the most conceptually interesting and theoretically/practically important project I've ever tackled - really enjoy working on it and excited to see where it ends up.

Paper accepted by Communication Theory

2011-08-29T17:05:00.000-07:00

Just learned that the paper I wrote with Michael McCluskey on user-generated content was accepted by Communication Theory (I blogged about it here). In the paper we discuss how today's communication environment poses serious challenges to theory building in communication-effects domain. We make a case for a philosophical and methodological adjustment to how communication effects research should be carried out. We suggest that Eveland's (2003) Mix-of-Attributes approach appears quite useful and is quickly gaining traction the more diverse today's media become and the more quickly they evolve. We use political user-generated content (as a hypothetical independent variable) and political participation (as a hypothetica dependent variable) to illustrate the merits of our theoretical and methodological arguments. We also touch upon several notions related to the more general role of ICTs in a producing individual-level and societal-level effects (e.g., technological determinism, social constructivism).

Job news

2011-03-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update: I will be joining Department of Communication Studies at New Mexico State University as an assistant professor this Fall, where I will continue researching UGC, political communication, and media effects, and will teach a variety of communication courses. I'm excited to make New Mexico my next home!

Now with the job search over, time to get that little dissertation thing wrapped up...

“What Are Journalists For?” An interesting book by Jay Rosen I highly recommend to everyone!

2010-10-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note that I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in topics like UGC, social media, participatory journalism, web 2.0, and so forth. This book provides interesting insights into the origins of the afore-mentioned phenomena, by focusing very directly on the “audience” of journalistic organizations. This book is largely a historic account of some experiments in public journalism done 15 years ago – which may not sound terribly exciting to folks studying journalism today. But, what’s most impressive about this volume is that it was published in 2001, which means it was written about 1998-9, and many of the insights are largely confirmed by the latest trends in today’s communication/journalism environment. It is exceedingly rare to find any scholarly work on journalism/communication that stands the test of time so well in today’s insanely turbulent, quickly-evolving, and seemingly unpredictable communication world.

Some of Jay’s insights:

1. Audience is overall pretty intelligent, and has little regard for fluff stories, for sensationalism, horse-race journalism, and such. It might be attracted to this stuff in the short term, but in the long run, it only alienates the largely thoughtful and perceptive public.

2. Journalism should be concerned (at least in its heart) with building a community and facilitating a “thick” democracy, rather than just reporting the facts. This attracts thoughtful and perceptive public to such journalistic product, because this type of public also cares about these noble/lofty goals.

3. There is a lot of wisdom existing in the “audience”. Tapping this wisdom is possible and essential for news organizations.

I wouldn't say I agree with everything Jay says. But, this book is thoughtful, enjoyable to read, and has largely been validated by what happened to journalism recently. This volume is pretty close to the works by Gans, Sigal, Tuchman and other prominent sociologists of news, in terms of its intellectual vigor.

Methodological paper on political participation indexes in political communication research

2010-07-20T07:54:00.001-07:00

Just had a paper accepted for publication by the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, in which I demonstrate the benefits of an approach for studying political participation and communication that’s somewhat different from the one conventionally used in political communication and political science. Basically, I suggest not to aggregate political participation items into a single “index” whenever we try to delineate precise effects of different media and communication behaviors on political participation. If we do aggregate, often we won’t be able to find many nuanced theoretically interesting effects.

Here's a pdf. Here's a summary.

Pew documents growth in UGC popularity and pervasiveness

2010-03-08T19:52:00.000-08:00

Pew recently reported some interesting findings showing clearly that UGC is here to stay. Some of the most noteworthy results are: 57% of Internet users in the USA use social-network sites; 25% have commented on a news story or a blog post; 17% have posted thoughts or links to news story on social network sites; 11% have tagged online content, and 9% have contributed article, picture, or video to a website.

Some more results, and I'm quoting from p. 44 of the report:

"Some 37% of internet users have actively contributed to the creation, commentary, or dissemination of news. We arrived at that figure by adding up the number of internet users who said they did any of the following activities:

• 25% of internet users have commented on an online news story or blog item about news that they read

• 17% of internet users have posted links and thoughts about news on a social networking site like Facebook. That translates into 30% of social network site users.

• 11% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online

• 9% of internet users have contributed their own article, opinion piece, picture, or video to an online news site

• 3% of internet users have used Twitter to post or re-Tweet a link to a news story or blog. That amounts to 18% of Twitter users."

UGC growth documented by Kaiser Family Foundation recent study

2010-01-26T08:54:00.000-08:00

Check out this report from Kaiser, based on their recent nationally representative study of youth (ages 8 to 18; N=2002), data for which was collected in 2008-2009. Some interesting findings on the overall increase of media consumption. But particularly interesting to this blog are the findings about the high levels of the user-generated content usage.

Howard Rheingold on the merit of Twitter

2009-12-20T09:59:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don't use Twitter, or who use it but still don't see what the big hype around it is all about (like myself), check out this interesting link. The post by Howard Rheingold offers several insights about what Twitter is good for and why. I disagree with one aspect of the post: Even if we accept Rheingold's ideas as valid, it is not necessarily Twitter illiteracy that keeps masses from embracing it - the whole "Twittering thing" might simply not fit everyone's personality...

Jarvis on the dark side of today's UGC...

2009-11-04T08:39:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting post by Jeff Jarvis (over at buzzmachine.com) about the negative consequences of today's effortless and speedy communication capability, created by web 2.0 socio-technological environment.

This seems to be very relevant to our understanding of why news cycle is shrinking and what negative effects it has on the quality of journalism: People demand more speed, have less ability to focus on any particular piece of news information, and therefore care less about substance.

Relevance of political (communication) science research

2009-10-19T20:16:00.000-07:00

An interesting discussion has been recently generated by a proposal to cut the National Science Foundation's funding to political science (see NYT and CHE articles). I wish our field - political communication - could have a similar discussion...

Reading the NYT piece in particular makes me (as a political communication researcher) wonder: How valuable are many of our field's studies that are guided not by the size and relevance of the questions, but rather by these questions' being "researchable" with conventional empirical methods and "analyzable" with conventional data analysis techniques?

I personally feel that purely theoretical work (that which has no direct practical application - as in "solving an interesting intellectual puzzle") is still valuable: As we are trying to understand the human nature, we simply cannot foresee if/how the insights we develop today can be relevant for the future discoveries or practical applications. I doubt that mathematics theorists of several hundred years ago envisioned how their discoveries back then could be instrumental to today's sophisticated computations relied on by biotech geneticists, computer scientists, physicists, engineers, NSA code brakers, etc. Perhaps those mathematics theorists tried to understand some puzzling numerical phenomena of their day, and incrementally got to where there are now.

But, still it appears that, generally, trying to put publications on one's CV, wrapping up research projects quickly, and following conventions is more prized in political communication research field than trying to answer "big" questions... And that seems to reduce our field's relevance and advancement. What do you, fellow researchers, think? Do we and political science have a problem?

User-generated content and politics

2009-10-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

Me and Michael are currently compiling a list of popular politically relevant UGC forms as part of our explication project.

Here are some we’ve ID’d so far:

Personal blog, the first political UGC type, is often maintained by individuals for a variety of purposes, from influencing others’ opinions to making money to creative expression (Davis, 2009; Pew, 2006). Some of the defining structural features of this UGC form is a reverse-chronological ordering of the date-stamped posts on the blog page, archiving of the older posts, and use of permalinks, all leading to emphasis on recency in blog posts and which enable cross-blog “dialogue” centered around specific blog posts (Hindman, 2009; OECD Report, 2007; O'Reilly, 2005). Currently, 10% of American Internet users read blogs on a typical day (Pew, 2009).

Chat room, the second UGC type, allows individuals to exchange most often textual information in a relatively interactive or synchronous manner (Cornwell & Lundgren, 2001). These can have one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, and many-to-one formats. Often, chat format encourages shorter messages and is carried out anonymously (Subrahmanyam, et al., 2004). Pew (2009) found that 5% of American Internet users “chat in a chat room or in an online discussion” on a typical day.

Discussion board/forum represents the third type of UGC. Such boards/forums are available to users through listing services where they are organized by topic (e.g., directory.big-boards.com; allchatsites.com). Boards are organized in a tree-like structure where the first level includes broad main sections (e.g., new members, FAQ, politics and news, marketplace, etc.), which consist of threads that can be started and replied to by the board participants. Many boards allow inclusion of multimedia into the posts, and allow for interaction among individual board members via private (instant messenger or email) or public (forum post replies or blog comments) channels. These forums can be moderated or unmoderated (Himelboim et al., 2009; Wright & Street, 2007).

Content-sharing site represents the fourth UGC type, encompassing various hugely popular sites, such as YouTube or Flickr. These sites contain a vast diversity of textual and multimedia content that users themselves submit, and often rate and organize to make it easily searchable. The ease of uploading content, numerous content search options, ease of content rating, and vast databases are some of the technological features making this UGC type attractive to users. Pew (2009) reported that 16% of online Americans use video-sharing sites and 5% upload photos to photo-sharing sites on a typical day.

Socially aggregated tagging site (a.k.a., folksonomy) represents the fifth UGC type. This UGC form allows mass audience to tag submitted content, creating layman’s taxonomy of this content based on the tags created by the users. The users do not necessarily generate the content, but instead they tag or classify the content, adding value to it by adding structure and making it better searchable. Folksonomies are sometimes incorporated into blogs, content-sharing and social network sites, as is the case with Flickr, Facebook, and Blogger-hosted blogs (although, they do not have to be incorporated, as is the case with ReddIt). Seven percent of American Internet users tag or categorize online content, such as photos, blog posts, and news stories on a typical day (Pew, 2009).

Social-network site is the next and the most popular type of UGC, allowing individuals to create personal web pages of varying degrees of publicness (boyd & Ellison, 2007) and, more importantly, connect these pages with others into an interrelated and clearly articulated network of online social relationships (OECD Report, 2007). MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook, ranked by Alexa.com in top 10 most popular website worldwide, are the best known representatives of this group. These sites are characterized by a variety of mechanisms to share information with one’s social network, and often incorporate blogs, IM, status updates, running tally of comments on the individual’s profile page, ability to share and tag various content, etc. The sites help individuals to maintain their existing networks of off-line relationships online, as well as develop new online-only networks of “friends” (boyd & Ellison, 2007). Pew (2009) reported that 19% of online Americans use this UGC type on a typical day.

Wiki is another type of UGC, representing a form of convenient collaborative authoring where a single coherent document is being edited by a large number of individuals who often have no interaction with one another other than their current collaborative work. Wikipedia (ranked as 7th most popular site worldwide by Alexa) is the most popular representative of this UGC group. Technologically, this UGC form is characterized by users’ ability to publish content, rather than simply discuss it with one another. Indeed, individuals are given substantial degree of control over the content, and can create any encyclopedia entry, or edit any existing entry (Bruns, 2009; OECD Report, 2007). Additionally, Wikipedia incorporates a variety of other UGC forms, such as discussion forum, where users can discuss the encyclopedia’s entries or rules of encyclopedia’s operation. Pew (2009) reports that 12% of online Americans use Wikipedia alone, which means that the percentage of users for other types of wikis (e.g., WikiMapia) might be much higher.

Participatory journalism site is the ninth UGC form. In their discussion of journalism transformation, Deuze et al. (2007), describe “participatory journalism” by emphasizing its 3 core elements:

(1) content shaped by both traditional producers and traditional consumers of the content;

(2) a degree of decentralization of the collaborative effort to shape content;

(3) balancing of editorial control by professional journalists with content creation efforts by the audiences.

It can be argued that every single journalistic organization today falls into this category if it offers contact information that can be used by the audience members to supply story ideas. We acknowledge this observation and agree that the difference today is in the degree of participation, and not in whether an organization is participatory or not. A variety of news outlets allow users to submit content (video, pictures, audio), offer story ideas, provide a space for users to publish their blogs and space to publish stories, enable users to tag, rate, vote on, and organize stories on the organization’s site, allow users to comment on the journalists’ stories, create discussion forums and chat rooms in context of the news organization’s site, allow users to build public profile and establish a network or connections with other users, etc. (Domingo et al., 2008; Chung, 2008).

Anything important missing from the list?? Let us know by leaving a comment.

A decent book on political blogs by Richard Davis

2009-08-21T06:13:00.000-07:00

If you are a journalist or a young researcher with an interest in political blogs, you'll definitely want to check out this book: Typing Politics: The Role of Blogs in American Politics. The book gives a rather comprehensive and systematic overview of research results and popular thought on blogs and their role in a democracy.

On the upside, the author looks at many angles to understand the impact of blogs, such as: who the bloggers are (the author offers a challenge to the Internet optimists by pointing out that bloggers aren't the average Joes who've been empowered by the Internet - although such assessment is debatable and, even if we accept that premise, its implications aren't as clear cut as the author argues), who the blog readers are (the author offers a neat typology of blog readers ranging from commenters, to daily readers, to regular readers, to occasional readers), what is the nature of the relationship between the bloggers and traditional journalists (this is perhaps the most tenable and well thought-out part of the book), what the blog content is like, and others. The author doesn't only synthesize existing literature on the blogs, but also introduces his own original and interesting data that is used to build the arguments. Finally, the literature surveyed and cited is impressive in its comprehensiveness. The analysis of the literature is cogent and insightful. This book is the most thorough treatment of political blogs, as a socio-political phenomenon, that I have seen in the existing literature!

On the downside, the author doesn't specify the reliability coefficients (besides percent agreement) in the content analysis - which somewhat irks me as a social scientist. Some arguments go father than is warranted by the presented evidence - especially in regards to the predictions about the future influence of blogs and prescription that blogs should become more like mainstream media to be successful. I wouldn't be so certain in making any predictions about the future of blogs (especially in such a forceful manner that is employed by the author) given unpredictability of the technological development and the audience's use of this technology. I also disagree about the blogs having to become more like MSM in order to be successful. The point of blogs is that they do not need to rely on the advertisers, and they do not need large mainstream audiences to be successful - that difference from MSM is at the core of what defines the essence of the blogs. The author also uses only the most popular political blogs in the analysis. This is a defensible practice, but it clearly undermines the generalizability of the claims in regards to all political blogs.

However, overall the volume is a solid intro into the political blogosphere for the researchers starting to examine blogs; it also might be thought-provoking for those researchers who've studied blogs for a while. Overall - I'd recommend buying and reading the volume. The volume is among very few out there that deal with new communication phenomena in such a systematic manner.

“Looseness” of language in (communication) research

2009-07-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

I’m currently working on an explication project - one of many, it appears, in the field of communication these days… Having read Chaffee (1991), Eveland (2003), Hempel (1952), among others, and reflecting on numerous seminar discussions about “communication as a discipline” I’m bothered by two related issues.

It seems to be non-controversial to say that in order for the scientific discipline to progress (in a global sense), the field needs to have an integrated network of knowledge that connects concepts in one corner of the field with concepts in another, and connects this network with concepts from other fields, producing a coherent and integrated body of knowledge that scholars can then use to build theory. Many of the communication field’s core concepts, however, appear to be as loose as the words in everyday language, if not worse. Some examples: Where does “medium” stop and “channel” begin? What is “communication”? Where does “mass” communication stop and “interpersonal” communication begin? What is “opinion leadership”? What is “media use”? Where does “hard news” end and “infotainment” begin? Where does “infotainment” end and “entertainment” begin? What is a “blog”? What is “user-generated content”?

How can the field of communication consider itself a science when even the most core and basic of its concepts are defined so imprecisely (admittedly, political science, sociology, psychology, and other fields have the same problem)? How can we advance knowledge through replication, if different studies use different “shades” of the same concepts, and predictably, have divergent results? This is one issue.

The second issue has the following premise: It also seams to be non-controversial that allowing one to tweak the IVs to make them more appropriate to the study’s DVs of interest appears to be reasonable. And this, perhaps, is one of the reasons why some of the above-mentioned concepts may have been conceptualized and operationalized inconsistently.

So, on the one hand, we are hindered as a field if our core concepts are not uniform and consistent in how they are used. On the other hand, we are hindered if we are consistent in how we use the concepts (if we let the “it-depends-on-what-your-DV-is” philosophy to allow us to tweak concepts behind the IVs). Is the only thing we can/should do is to define any concept the way we want to define it, explain how and why we did it, and move on with the study? This does not seem to be a very satisfying answer. Is there a Solomon solution to how we should handle this that is practical, intellectually honest, and conducive to theory building? Clearly, I don’t have any good answers. Also, do these issues bother anyone? Please comment with your thoughts.

"Cool" research...

2009-06-23T09:23:00.001-07:00

I'm teaching an undergraduate "research methods" course this summer and wanted to get some "crowd wisdom" from the fellow teachers/researchers on one issue. The course is a requirement and a lot of students enroll just to fulfill the requirement, rather than because they are interested in research. I'm hoping to make the course as interesting and even fun for them as possible...

To do so, I want to introduce my students to various famous/infamous social science research studies that are "cool." By cool I simply mean studies that have used a unique and interesting method, or studies that have put conventional wisdom on its head, or studies that were particularly elaborate (or perhaps very elegant) in their design, or studies that had profound impact in some practical or theoretical area, and (most importantly) these studies should be understandable and interesting to the undergraduate students who are not very familiar with the social scientific research. Hopefully, these studies will also be memorable.

So far, I have the following 3:

- Asch conformity experiments (here's a video)

- Milgram obedience experiments (here's a video)

- Tetlock's "expert political judgment" study

What other "cool" studies are out there? Please leave a comment with your nominations/suggestions. Thanks!

Update: Thank you all for your help!! Below is a non-exhaustive list of suggestions I've received by email or in comments:

- Milgram "small-world" or "six-degrees of seperation" experiment (thank you, Nick)

- LaMarre et al study on the Colbert Report (thank you, Nick)

- Zimbardo et al prison experiment (thank you, Laurel and Dr. Slater; thank you, Kristen, for the link; here's a slideshow)

- Darley & Batson "helping behavior" study (thank you, Dr. Rios Morrison)

- Pennebaker et al study on "bars and attractiveness" (thank you, Nori)

- Sherif et al Robbers cave experiment (thank you, Dr. Roberto)

- Bickerton language formation study (thank you, Jason)
- Glindemann et al study on celebratory drinking (thank you, Lindsay)

If you know of a link to a video or pictures illustrating the studies, please leave a comment and I'll update this post.

UGC explication project plan

2009-06-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

It seems like me and Michael now have a clear idea of where to go in terms of the UGC explication project. Below is the 4-part project plan. Step one is complete. It'll be one exciting and tough project...

User-generated content and (somewhat) participatory journalism

2009-06-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

This recent multinational study should be interesting to those sociology of news researchers who study the UGC’s impact on traditional journalism. This study shows that citizens are still held at an arms length away from news-filtering process by the traditional news workers, while being invited to contribute to content only at the margins. Perhaps, that’s why my own research (study 1; study 2) shows that citizens turn to alternative outlets to contribute and sidestep mainstream media, diminishing their clout precisely during the filtering stage…

Below is the table from the article that sums up the core findings about how and when citizens can contribute to news production (p. 336):

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Notes:

APA citation: Domingo, D., Quandt, T., Heinonen, A., Paulussen, S., Singer, J. B., & Vujnovic, M. (2009). Participatory journalism practices in the media and beyond. Journalism Practice, 2(3), 326-342.

Cracking the UGC popularity code

2009-05-28T06:23:00.000-07:00

Guosong Shao (2009) has some interesting thoughts on this. The researcher suggests that UGC allows individuals to fulfill the following three groups of needs: (1) Self-expression and self-actualization; (2) social interaction and community development; (3) information and entertainment. This seems to me like a solid explanation for a large chunk of the UGC's appeal (see my related post).

Here's a neat graph from the paper (p. 15), illustrating the psychological mechanisms the author is proposing:

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Notes:

APA citation: Shao, G. (2009). Understanding the appeal of user-generated media: A uses and gratification perspective. Internet Research, 19(1), 7-25.

Research award

2009-05-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

Just found out that several of my collaborators (Kristen Landreville, Michael Beam and Nicholas Geidner) and I have won the 3rd place award in the annual Jung-Sook Lee student paper competition run by the AEJMC (comm tech division). In this project, titled: "Gatekeeping and YouTube: News filters and the intermedia dynamic in the age of user-generated content,"we’ve examined how YouTube empowered non-elites to very effectively join the public discourse throughout the 2008 Presidential Election campaign.

"Old-school" journalism

2009-05-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

Jeff Jarvis over at BuzzMachine.com has an illuminating post up on the "rules" for the WSJ reporters, which clearly show that "new" and "old" journalism are living in two seperate dimensions... Among the WSJ rules are:

- Do not mix pleasure and business on Twitter

- Do not talk about how the "sausage is being made" (story editing, reporting, attending meetings, sourcing, ongoing unpublished investigations, etc.)

I see no reason why contextualizing and humanizing journalism is inherently bad. It seems to be working very well for Politico.com and Brian Williams over at MSNBC...

What is politics-oriented UGC?

2009-05-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

Now, that I'm done with my candidacy exam :), I want to share some thoughts on my latest reseach interest - politics- and news-oriented user-generated content (UGC).

First and foremost: What is it?

The practice of average citizens expressing their ideas to the masses has been here for centuries. Some of the ancestors and cousins of today’s online UGC include: posters and signs on walls, pamphlets, letters to the editor, calls to the talk radio programs, electronic bulletin board posts, open-source software, and many others. If the idea is not new, why talk about it today? Popularity is one answer. Today’s UGC is significantly more popular than any previous form, making it more influential (see my previous post on this).

I find myself going back and forth from (a) there's nothing new under the sun, and therefore UGC is just a new "remix" of the old media "attributes" (see Eveland, 2003); and (b) there is something unique about this new "remix" that's unprecedented and consequential.

One of the features that seem to explain UGC's popularity is that it allows for an integrated fulfillment of various needs. Individuals have many needs that they like to satisfying by using media (note 1). The more needs one can satisfy, the better for that individual’s psychological well-being. The more needs any given medium can satisfy, the better for that medium’s bottom line, as the success of “yellow journalism” and its today’s manifestation - the “infotainment” phenomenon - clearly illustrate (note 2). Indeed, individuals use many media for more reasons than just one. For example, news information is often utilized for both information (learning about the important happenings in one’s community) and diversion (entertaining oneself with odd, unusual, funny, and touching stories) (note 3). What seems to be novel today is that UGC offers individuals a “one-stop shopping mall” for gratifying many of their important needs simultaneously in a highly integrated fashion.

Shao suggests that today’s UGC allows individuals to fulfill the following three groups of needs almost simultaneously: (1) Self-expression and self-actualization, (2) social interaction and community development, and (3) information and entertainment. Of course, the degree of how much each of these groups of needs is important and is fulfilled by individuals will vary across individuals; but the point is that individuals now have a way to gratify many of these needs seamlessly in one convenient location. While many existing media can help gratify certain needs, the ease and efficiency of fulfilling many needs seems to be important. If individuals try to fulfill their informational need, but find that using some medium to obtain informational gratification is mentally vexing – individuals might give up and remain unsatisfied. However, if a certain medium allows individuals to effortlessly and effectively gratify their informational needs, while at the same time being entertained, feeling socially connected, and experiencing self-actualization and empowerment, the individual is likely to be thoroughly satisfied and encouraged to utilize the medium frequently.

We can go further in identifying more specific unique features of the UGC. Here are just three characteristics:

- Mass v. interpersonal communication. Blurring or even elimination of the distinction between mass and interpersonal communication (note 4), as both types of communication are present in context of UGC in a highly integrated fashion. This happens due to UGC and social media enabling individuals to communicate in “one-to-many” format (vertical, mass communication), as well as in “one-to-one” format (horizontal, interpersonal communication). This can be contrasted to a predominantly “one-to-many” format of information dissemination by traditional media (e.g., newspapers, television, radio), although today some traditional media adopt UGC characteristics – perhaps in order to aid with the marketing or information gathering efforts (note 5).

- Public v. private orientation. Social media also blur “public” v. “private” distinction (Lange, 2007). In context of blogs, or social-networking sites it becomes unclear what form of communication (public or private) takes place when individuals post deeply intimate thoughts that can be viewed by anyone who happens to stumble upon this content. Personal and private communication, that has previously been taking place mostly among close friends and family member, now is published online and publicly accessible (see Keen, 2008 for discussion on downsides of this trend). This occurs in contrast to the old communication practice where personal letters were clearly private, and where letters to the editor were clearly public, for example.

- Interactivity and audience activity. Audiences or consumers of information that characterized “old” communication formats are now participants in communication and “prosumers” (note 6) of content in contexts of UGC and social media. Audience activity is significantly increased, as they (co)create content that they publish online, they intensively communicate with others via various communication options (email, IM, digital “wall” posts, etc.), they react to one another’s opinion expression (blog posts, picture comments, community rating of content, etc.). Admittedly, F2F communication, which existed before, is characterized by the same richness and intensiveness of interpersonal interactions; however, such interactivity is enabled in contexts that go beyond F2F communication. Such audience activity has never occurred in regards to traditional “mass” communication contexts.

These seem to represent what most forms of UGC share.

_______

Notes:

1. A variety of research exists on this in psychology and communication. See, for example, Gans, H.J. (1979). Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time. New York: Pantheon Books; and Zillmann, D. (1988). Mood management through communication choices. American Behavioral Scientist, 31(3), 327-340.

2. See this very interesting analysis of political blogs: Woodly, D. (2008). New competencies in democratic communication? Blogs, agenda setting and political participation. Public Choice, 134: 109-123.

3. See this influential examination of political news consumption: Graber, D. A. (1988). Processing the News. New York: Longman.

4. One of my favorite articles talks about this: Chaffee, S. H., & Metzger, M. J. (2001). The end of mass communication? Mass Communication & Society, 4(4): 365-379.

5. See some of Dr. Kosicki and my theorizing on this: Dylko, I. B., & Kosicki, G. M. (2006, August). Sociology of news and new media: How the blogosphere transforms our understanding of journalism and changes news. Paper presented at Communication Technology Division at the 2006 Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication Annual Convention, San Francisco, CA.

6. A very insightful article on UGC: Van Dijck J. (2009). Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content. Media, Culture & Society, 31(1), 41-58

More internet users = more $$$ for Google?? Not necessarily...

2009-05-04T06:37:00.001-07:00

Here's an interesting article about the energy expenses of the major www companies. An interesting article, but it doesn't seem likely that the electricity expenses will make it any harder for Google (reportedly making $5.51 billion in the 1st quarter of '09) to justify subsiding YouTube.

The latest Pew study on the 2008 Presidential Election and the Internet; and couple of latest Nielsen's reports...

2009-05-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

The study first of all shows that the Internet as a political news source is as popular as newspapers... Also, it shows that the user-generated content phenom is picking up. Is it going to "revolutionize" political communication, like the political blogs were supposed to? Probably not. But, due to its widespread appeal and smaller requirement of political sophistication in order to produce and consume such content, we can predict a far greater penetration across the board, and consequently, greater effects of UGC.

Some additional findings of interest:

- 18% of online Americans have done at least one of these four activities: posting politics-oriented content on (1) a social networking sites; (2) Web sites of any kind; (3) blogs; (4) online discussions, listservs or any other group forums

- 33% of online Americans have either forwarded political commentary or writing to others, forwarded political audio or video recording to others, or shared photos, videos or audio files online related to the election with others

- 45% of online Americans visited video-sharing sites during the 2008 presidential election to view politics-oriented videos, many of which were created by non-elite citizens

Also, I've just stumbled across an interesting Nielsen report showing that social media audience now exceeds that of email (!!) Also, as the graph on p. 1 shows, social media audience growth has been the steepest from 2003 thru 2009, compared to email, video, and web search.

A second report shows something that's even more interesting - in May 2009 websites featuring user-generated content have been on the top 10 web brands list (YouTube # 6, with 87 million unique users, Facebook # 7 with 71 million, and Wikipedia being # 9 with 59 million).

What's keeping me busy...

2009-05-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

Currently, 3 projects that I'm either leading or carrying out solo:

1. Publishing dissertation. In my dissertation (1) I am agreeing with Eveland (2003) that his mix-of-attributes approach is better suited for theorizing about effects of using various media forms, and (2) I illustrate the benefits of this framework and illustrate how one can apply it by theorizing about how users' interaction with political user-generated content (UGC) can facilitate political participation among those users. I argue that there are certain technological attributes that "define" political UGC, and that use of those attributes leads (directly and through several multi-step mediation processes) to greater level of individual-level political participation. These attributes are: information retrieval performance (e.g., ability to sort content based on the number/tone of user-generated comments; content clicks); content manipulability (i.e., degree to which a user can alter content available to all other users on a website); content customizability (i.e., degree to which a user can customize info available to him/herself on a website); participation facilitation (e.g., links to politician's facebook group; links to website where donation to political causes can be made); and community orientation (e.g., reputational info availability, ability to effectively search for groups existing on a website). Each attribute has about 6-10 different technological features. I’m using a quantitative content analysis to document which attributes and to which degree are present on the most popular: political blogs, content-sharing sites, wikis, discussion forums, participatory-journalism sites, and traditional news websites.

Here's an image of the cluster analysis dendrogram I obtained from my dissertation data. It shows similarity of different websites on the five attributes I described above.

As of today, one paper based on my dissertation was accepted by Communication Theory. Another paper is almost done. Plans for a book are being made.

2. Explicating customizability and moving beyond technology determinism v. social constructivism debate. I'm trying to develop conceptual insights into political implications of customizability by explicating customizability in a way that avoids what I believe to be an unproductive debate between tech determinists and social constructivists. I blogged about this project here.

3. Information processing bias and depth. In this information processing (IP) study, the usefulness of simultaneously investigating bias and depth in information processing (IP) is suggested. Much research exists on both depth and bias in IP. However, all of these studies examine either IP bias or IP depth without drawing theoretical linkages between the two, which, as this research argues, hinders theory building. To illustrate the importance of considering both depth and bias in IP simultaneously, research on various commonly used IP concepts from educational psychology, political psychology, and political communication is synthesized. Practical and theoretical usefulness of treating both bias and depth as equally important, and often inextricably intertwined dimensions of IP are discussed..

4. On the role of technology. This theoretical work synthesizes multi-disciplinary research to develop a model illustrating precisely how technology impacts communication processes at various stages. The paper argues for a greater inclusion of technology into existing political communication theorizing (as Bennett and Iyengar, 2008 argued).

-- last updated 12/20/2011 --

Blogs and the sociology of news: The case of the CBS scandal

2009-02-01T11:18:00.000-08:00

Update (Dylko): It is interesting how the recent popular revolutions and protests across the globe (Egypt, Tunisia, etc.) have been characterized by the same multi-mediator process, as the CBS scandal, described in the article below: (1) some event happens, which leads to this: (2) alternative (i.e., social user-driven) media allow thousands of people (including members of the traditional press) to learn about the event, which then leads to this: (3) traditional or mainstream media cover it, all of which lead to these: (4a) more and similar events, (4b) more ordinary people learning about those events, (4c) more reports coming from the traditional news media, and (4d) provoking reaction from political power establishment. The this cycle of 1, 2, 3, and 4 repeats again, than again, and again... ultimately creating tangible political change. Step # 2 appears to be novel, most likely an outcome of today's media environment, whereas steps 1, 3, and 4 are as old as any traditional democratic institutions. This step # 2 is the focus of the present work.

Abstract: This essay examined implications of the blogosphere for the sociology of news, on the extra-media and media-routines levels. A case study of the CBS 60 Minutes segment about George W. Bush’s military service in Texas Air National Guard was used to demonstrate that traditional journalists heavily relied on information from the blogosphere in their reporting on this controversial story and that blogs could break stories faster than traditional media and successfully push them onto media’s agenda. General implications of news blogosphere for journalism and journalists are discussed.

By Ivan B. Dylko & Gerald M. Kosicki

Technological progress has changed many social processes, including the way we get news and the way this news is constructed. Technological innovations (e.g., optimization of the printing process, the invention of radio, etc.) often had an effect on older media, forcing them to adapt to new circumstances (Rodman, 2006). The development of radio, television, and the Internet have in particular impacted the content of the news and led to a transformation of older media in various ways, such as going back to the specific medium’s fundamentals or adopting some new features (Althaus & Tewksbury, 2000; Shaw, Hamm & Knott, 2000). For example, when television started dominating the media industry, radio managed to stay competitive after it improved sound quality with the invention of the FM frequency, became portable after the invention of the transistor, and began to sound more personal than ever before (Fang, 1997; Rodman, 2006). Radio also had to change its focus from prime time to “drive time” (Fang, 1997: p. 150), because television has effectively muscled radio out of the lucrative prime-time evening entertainment market.

The introduction of the Internet posed similar challenges to many older media because of the Internet’s multi-platform capabilities that facilitated the combination of text, sound and video. One online tool - blogging, is also becoming widely embraced by news media organizations (Thurman, 2008) as a way to engage citizens and encourage the expression of opinions. Blogs are enabled by the creation of easy-to-use web-based tools that help create journal-style web pages that are typically arranged chronologically, personal in nature, and updated frequently. Blog creators have the option of allowing readers to add their own original material to the blog or merely comment on material already there (Benkler, 2006), often facilitating interaction not only between blogger and readers, but between fellow readers as well. Thus, blogs are a kind of highly flexible group writing project. The availability of easy-to-use software enables writers and other content providers to concentrate on their content and not have to be very concerned with the software or hardware that makes it possible. Many popular blogs today can attract advertising revenue. Indeed, some blogs that started as the efforts of a single individual have been sold and continued in a more business-like manner. Examples of this include the various sites operated by Gawker Media, an online media firm that operates at least a dozen popular blogs and is estimated to have advertising revenue of several million dollars a year.

The purpose of this article is to examine how weblogs or “blogs” (the term “blog” in this paper refers to primarily political news blogs) redefine our understanding of journalism and how the blogosphere (the universe of blogs) transforms the news media products. Other forms of collaborative writing or social production such as wikis are beyond the scope of this effort. However, form- and content-related transformations are only some of the influences put upon traditional media by blogs. Specifically, this paper answers Nisbet’s (2008) call for examination of intermedia influence of blogopshere on news agendas of the traditional press.

History. The history of blogs is short but very rich. When the first blogs emerged in the late 1990s (e.g., Jensen, 2003) they were primarily web pages that contained many links and offered mostly “personal information” (Dearstyne, 2005: p. 39). One of the first manifestations of how powerful blogs would become was a 2002 scandal involving U.S. Senator Trent Lott (R-Mississippi). The then-Majority Leader of the Senate, Lott gave a speech at Senator Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party, in which he praised the Dixiecrat platform of Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign (Williams & Delli Carpini, 2004). Unlike media elites who started paying attention only about a week later (e.g., Fasoldt, 2003; Kaye, 2005), bloggers quickly recognized the importance of the story and kept relentlessly researching and covering it. These efforts lead to significant traditional media attention and subsequent public opinion pressure for Lott to step down as Majority Leader (Kahn & Kellner, 2004; Kaye, 2005). In this case, as well as in several others (Jeff Gannon and CNN’s Easton Jordan) it can be argued that it was not the blogosphere but traditional media’s1 attention and subsequent public opinion pressure that ultimately forced several individuals to step down or resulted in some other outcome. We argue that blogs played a direct role in getting these stories on the agenda of the traditional media, but also were significant forces that helped shape and define the stories. As such blogs played a critical and immediate role in forcing public figures to suffer the consequences of their behavior.

Today, blogs are becoming more and more traditional as Americans increasingly turn to the Internet and discover these fun and engaging information outlets. A recent Gallup Poll found that in 2005 about 20% of online Americans used blogs frequently or occasionally and another 13% used blogs rarely (Gallup Poll, 2006). By 2008, the number of blog readers grew to over 40% (Technorati, 2008). Traditional media also no longer just report on blogs, but they either host their own, mostly in opinion sections of their websites, or their reporters start individual blogs officially or unofficially (Singer, 2005; Cyberjournalist, 2005).

Unique Characteristics of Blogs. The widespread popularity of blogs suggests it is one creative outlet for the “cognitive surplus” that many people have as a result of shorter work weeks and increased leisure time (Shirky, 2008). Blogging is a creative outlet and can be engaged in by almost anyone who enjoys writing. Other types of “crowdsourcing” efforts to create user-generated content have also been popular and have created products of considerable commercial and practical value – such as “open source software.” This is a particularly good example of how volunteer efforts harnessing the talents of thousands of people worldwide create useful and valuable tools and products. Premiere examples of open-source software products in widespread use include OpenOffice, a project devoted to the creation of desktop productivity programs mimicking the proprietary Microsoft Office, Project R for statistical software, and the Mozilla Project, creators of the popular open-source browsers Netscape and Firefox. In the realm of content creation, worldwide there are a number of multilingual projects such as Wikipedia, and sites devoted to journalism such as OhMyNews.com and other examples of “citizen journalism.” A common element in blogging and the above-described technologies is that they are fun to engage with. One thing that differentiates blogs from traditional media news sites and allows them to attract large audiences is that for many people blogs are fun to read and write. Millions of people blog as a hobby, expecting no compensation for their efforts (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2006). Others blog in order to express their ideas, launch a career in writing, attract attention to their ideas, or earn revenue through advertising. Some other characteristics of blogs are:

Interactivity. Besides email, audience members can usually interact with the blogger and each other online through a “comments” option, although this is done at the discretion of the person who creates and maintains the blog (Woodly, 2008). Available on many blogs (see Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2006), the option allows “audiences to blend with producers” (Wall, 2005: p. 167) of the content, turning audiences into an army of volunteer citizen journalists and researchers. Because of the increased interactivity and specialized knowledge base, blogs may be capable of engaging active audiences far more effectively than traditional media can. This might be one reason that traditional media’s online operations now routinely incorporate blogs as ways to engage readers and viewers. In this regard blogs are similar to talk radio, in that they allow audiences to talk back and possibly even feel more efficacious (e.g., Davis, 1997) by linking people electronically into a single ‘public sphere.’ This aspect of blogs can be compared to “other opinion activities, most notably discussing public policy issues in face-to-face settings” (Pan & Kosicki, 1997: p. 373).

Makeover of journalistic norms. Similar to political talk radio, blogs do not have to abide by such journalistic norms as objectivity or even civility (Davis, 1997; Woodly, 2008), although most traditional media use a form of mediated blogging in which they attempt to control what is posted on their sites. Some bloggers and talk radio hosts use offbeat tactics to attract large audiences from the extremes of the ideological spectrum. For example, prominent blogger and media consultant Jeff Jarvis made a post on his blog in which he called CBS “an ass” (Jarvis, 2006) after the company sued Howard Stern. Such practices are possible because bloggers are less susceptible to advertiser pressures.

Also, if the audience considerations based on geography play any role in traditional media news product creation, such considerations may become less important in the blogosphere, which is not spatially bound. Blogs may have more latitude in “choosing” their audience than do traditional media and as a result, their content may be much less reflective of the cultural and ideological norms of some particular geographic area.

Finally, blogs often contain openly opinionated commentary. Similar to political talk radio, these opinions often determine what stories are mentioned and how they are framed by the bloggers. Such opinions may also determine who reads the blog by attracting like-minded individuals, receptive to bloggers’ slanted and often extreme perspectives (Eveland & Dylko, 2007). Somewhat surprisingly, at least from a traditional journalism perspective, this explicit bias may be advantageous for blogs. Blog readers know about this bias and it is believed that the awareness of such bias allows blog readers to make accurate judgments about what bloggers say, unlike traditional media where the bias may still exist, but in a more subtle form (e.g., Davis, 1997; Johnson & Kaye, 2004). Those who do not share the bias can still effectively use the information by making various mental adjustments for the bias that they see (Fredin & Kosicki, 1989; Kosicki & McLeod, 1990). One question in connection with this decoding, however, is whether and to what extent the nature of the ideology, financial or other commitments being espoused is adequately disclosed. This is, of course, an issue for both blogs and traditional media content

Transparency. Two types of transparency are manifest in the blogosphere. On the one hand, hyperlinking capability allows blogs to connect news stories to their original sources (such as official speeches, governmental reports, and any other information available online). This has also become a staple of traditional media’s online sites. On the other hand, any errors made by the bloggers become immediately apparent to numerous people because blog readers can quickly and easily bring even minor mistakes to light in the blogosphere, as often happens (Singer, 2005). Transparency might also include disclosure of commitments, funding and other structural matters.

Accessibility. Availability of free and easy-to-use online software allows individuals without any technical skills to become bloggers, resulting in an abundance of information and diversifying the pool of available perspectives (Coleman, 2005; Sunstein, 2006). However, some blog research indicates that bloggers and blog readers are a relatively elitist group, resembling classic early adopters of new technologies: White, male, well-educated, high-income earners (Johnson & Kaye, 2004; Technorati, 2008) – results challenged by others (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2006).

Effects on News Media Product. Scholars have identified many factors that can affect the news media product. Shoemaker and Reese (1991) argued that news could be affected on different levels: ideological, extramedia, organizational, media routines, and individual level (see Figure 1).

Scholars interested in how media agendas are built identified many external factors that influence news construction, such as: the elite press, type of media, access to information, intermedia conformity and competition, notable events and real-world indicators, newsworthiness criteria, government regulation, public officials and elites, popular movies, public relations campaigns and political advertising, special interest groups, advertisers, and unique sources (Cronkite, 1998; Danielian & Reese, 1989; Dearing & Chang, 1991; Dearing & Rogers, 1996; Ku, Kaid & Pfau, 2003; Lang & Lang, 1983; McCombs, 2004; Nisbet & Huge, 2006; Reese, 1991; Rogers & Reisner, 1992; Shoemaker & Reese, 1991; Sigal, 1973; Soroka, 2000). Two of these factors are particularly important for our discussion: media types and conformity.

Media types. Researchers have shown that, because of the inherent characteristics of different media, certain types of media are more influential than the others for construction of the general media agenda. Broadcast media have been shown to play the role of an agenda-setter for a major print outlet (Reese & Danielian, 1989). Today’s newspapers emphasize thorough investigative reporting and deeper analysis, which in turn allows them to break stories, and indeed there is evidence of print media leading broadcast media’s coverage of different issues (Cronkite, 1998; Ku et al., 2003; Reese & Danielian, 1989).

Blogs are transforming into another unique type of specialized media that heavily relies on traditional media and which in turn, can be successfully utilized by traditional media. Several unique characteristics of blogs, especially accessibility and interactivity, encourage fast and intensive exchange of information between blog readers and bloggers, facilitating creation of a rich collaborative news product. It is plausible that sometimes this product can be created by the blogosphere quicker and with less effort than by the traditional media outlets that generally value individualism and where large-scale collaborations are rare (Mnookin, 2004). As a result, traditional media can benefit from turning to blogs for leads, story ideas, and sources (Kempner, 2005; Reese et al., & 2005; Williams & Delli Carpini, 2004). In other words, certain well-known blogs seem to be treated by some journalists as if they were specialized print publications that have been the staples of news coverage for decades. In this paper, we investigate this claim empirically.

Research Question 1: Do traditional media rely on information found in the blogosphere?

Conformity. Intermedia conformity, which often characterizes traditional media coverage, gives blogs an advantage in breaking stories. Traditional media often have to balance their need for exclusive coverage and a desire to bring information to audiences faster than the competition with the necessity to provide accurate information. It is reasonable to suspect that reporters often solve this dilemma by becoming more cautious and restrained, fearing that if they are wrong, their individual reputations, as well as reputations of their organizations will be damaged. With the exception of investigative reporting, this balancing act often results in coverage that is uniform in terms of topics across different media outlets (Shoemaker & Reese, 1991) and homogeneous in terms of frames used in coverage of these topics (Danielian & Reese, 1989).

Although this may shrink their audiences and damage their credibility, the bloggers appear not to be troubled by this limitation, because occasional mistakes are expected in the supersonic environment of the blogosphere (Matheson, 2004; Singer, 2005). In addition, a blog can be maintained by a sole individual using a laptop and an Internet connection from his or her home, which means that blogs are not characterized by bureaucracy inherent in traditional media. All these factors might encourage bloggers to take more risks and as a result break more news stories than traditional media (as well as to err more frequently than traditional media). It might also result in different types of stories being pushed to the fore of public debate than what the traditional media are accustomed to providing.

Research Question 2: Are blogs capable of pushing stories onto the traditional media agenda?

Research Question 3: Are blogs capable of breaking news faster than traditional media?

Method. To answer the research questions, we chose to study one high-profile case that is complex enough to illustrate how the blogosphere influenced the news creation process. Several potential cases were considered and examined, including the terrorist attacks in September 2001; resignation of Trent Lott; the resignation of Howell Raines, editor of The New York Times; CBS documents scandal; Gannon scandal; and several others. We settled on the CBS documents scandal for several reasons. The case was characterized by developments typical of many recent scandals that originated in the blogosphere - it started when a public figure did something wrong and shortly thereafter bloggers and their readers unearthed some relevant hard-to-find evidence; subsequently, traditional media picked the story up and made it widely known, which resulted in a number of high-profile resignations. Another consideration that guided our selection of the case was that the scandal received a lot of coverage from the blogosphere and the traditional media and that the role of blogs was thoroughly documented.

In order to recreate the precise timeline of events and identify the principal players in the CBS scandal, we relied upon inductive and deductive approaches to analyze news content, scholarly articles, professional investigative reports, books written by individuals intimately involved in the controversy, and other sources. The analysis of the relevant blogs’ posts was possible due to a standard practice of blogs to archive all the content with permanent URL addresses online. Snow-ball-like reference search also enabled us to precisely recreate the key events of the controversy.

Case Study. The presidential election campaign was at its peak when CBS prepared and aired the infamous report about the service of President George W. Bush in Texas Air National Guard. The 2004 campaign was similar to the one in 2000 in that both highlighted the military service records of the major party candidates. The 2004 election was marked by a particularly strong emphasis on patriotism and military experience by both parties because of public concern about security, the extensive post-9/11 government activities directed against terrorism, and because of the wars being conducted by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. For example, in September 2004, the Air National Guard documents story (analyzed here) was competing with such stories as: the Iraq war, the possibility of military draft, the protection of civil liberties in context of anti-terrorism efforts, and the doctrine of preventive war (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2005; The Urgent, 2004; Wilgoren, 2004).

As a result of such an extraordinary interest in the military backgrounds of both candidates, many traditional and alternative news outlets were competing for scoops related to these topics. When CBS obtained documents that raised serious questions about Bush’s military service on 2 September 2004, the news organization quickly put together a story using them as primary source materials. After several days of trying to verify the authenticity of the documents and their content, a segment was aired on September 8 (CBS, 2005). The story appeared during the “60 Minutes” program on CBS and offered a highly negative account of the president, describing how Bush received preferential treatment during his service because of his family connections. A story with a similar angle was pursued by CBS during the previous presidential election campaign, but was never aired (CBS, 2005).

The segment centered on information obtained from several previously unpublicized copies of documents allegedly obtained from a personal file of Bush’s squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. The documents provided evidence for the following claims: Bush’s commanders were pressured from above to evaluate him positively and Bush performed unsatisfactorily and disobeyed orders during his service (CBS, 2005; Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2005).

As Figure 2 shows, while the exceedingly sensitive segment on Bush was still being broadcast Wednesday evening, several conservative online political enthusiasts began questioning the documents used as primary evidence in the segment. One of the first attacks came from a conservative blog Free Republic just two minutes into the segment, when a blog reader with a screen name “Howlin” wrote: “And the lead in, ’Breaking his silence after 30 years…’ What a lie.”(Footnote 2). Another reader, named “tapatio” wrote a few minutes later at 8:15p.m.: “Don’t you like the way all these ‘new papers’ come from a dead man?”(Footnote 3). At 8:19p.m. a blog reader named “TankerKC” posted a comment with some technical details on Free Republic, which suggested that the documents might be fake:

"They are not in the style that we used when I came in to the USAF. They looked like the style and format we started using about 12 years ago (1992). Our signature blocks were left justified, now they are right of center…like the ones they just showed." (Footnote 4).

In the early morning of the next day, September 9, writers of a prominent conservative weblog, PowerLine.com, put up a post titled “The sixty-first minute” (Footnote 5) that linked to the information from freerepublic.com and also offered new insights into technical discrepancies of the CBS report. After a total of 14 updates to the original post that contained scans of signatures (borrowed from a group-citizen blog called The Command Post) and disputed documents, Power Line bloggers moved on to make other posts on the topic. By the end of the next day on September 9 numerous bloggers including Blogs for Bush, War Blogging, and others hyperlinked to the original post on Power Line further publicizing the doubts about the disputed documents and drawing even more audiences (and potential fact-checkers) to the original posts. After many popular blogs, such as Instapundit, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and others began examining the CBS report on September 9, “the onslaught of attacks on the authenticity of the Killian documents was unrelenting” (CBS, 2005: p. 153). The resulting pressure from new and traditional media forced Dan Rather to apologize on September 20 for airing the questionable report and later resign from his anchor position at CBS (CBS, 2005; Reese, et al., 2005). On 19 September 2007 Rather sued CBS claiming that by ousting him the company succumbed to political pressure and compromised fundamental principles of independence in journalism, as well as broke the terms of his contract and tarnished his reputation (Gold, 2007).

The authors of this manuscript do not take any sides in this controversy, however, our research showed that the disputed memos could not be proved to be accurate (Mapes, 2005; Thornburgh & Boccardi, 2005). This point is important, because it shows that despite the partisan fervor that fueled a lot of research effort on this issue inside the blogosphere, the conservative online army of fact-checkers and activists did have a valid reason to disagree with the CBS story that implicitly and explicitly represented the documents as authentic.

During the day right after the segment was aired traditional media showed little agility in reporting on the controversy, while the blogosphere “was abuzz” (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2005: p. 20). One of the first traditional media outlets to report on the segment was ABC News that broadcast a story on the evening of September 9 questioning the content of the documents and their font style (CBS, 2005). But, it was not until September 10 that traditional media gave the controversy deserved coverage, with The New York Times and The Washington Post jumping on the story (Seelye & Rutenberg, 2004; Dobbs & Allen, 2004). An article that appeared in The Washington Post on September 10 raised authenticity questions and used Killian’s widow and typing experts as sources. The article also briefly mentioned the role of the blogs in questioning the authenticity of the documents (Dobbs & Allen, 2004).

Several days after the questionable broadcast some traditional media began acknowledging the active role of blogs in their coverage of the CBS controversy. For example, in its September 12 article, The Washington Post reported that bloggers were on the story about documents almost immediately, pointing out that the “document experts began questioning their authenticity almost as soon as they were published on the Internet” (Dobbs, 2004: p. A1). In its September 16 editorial, the San Antonio Express-News wrote that bloggers’ handling of the CBS controversy was a clear manifestation of their power, later becoming a story in itself. What the newspaper wrote in its editorial on that day became a leitmotif in numerous subsequent articles and books (see Sunstein, 2006; Dorroh, 2005) on the blogosphere:

"As with any medium, bloggers include purveyors of meaningful information and enlightening commentary, as well as recyclers and garbage dealers. What has become clear is that serious bloggers are now helping shape the public debate and driving issues that the mainstream media might otherwise ignore." (There’s No, 2004: p. A1)

Mary Mapes, the CBS producer of the Memo segment who lost her job after the controversy unraveled, addressed the case in her memoir (Mapes, 2005) more thoroughly and with more insider knowledge (but, also more passionately) than many other sources, identified by the researchers. She concedes that traditional media, especially large CBS competitors, relied extensively and, in her opinion, unjustifiably, on the research efforts of conservative bloggers and were influenced by these online news outlets. Mapes’ conclusions in this regard seem valuable, because, having lost her job and having suffered a very serious blow to her professional reputation, she should be expected to be unlikely to openly acknowledge the influence of blogs in shaping news media agenda or in guiding conventional journalistic thinking. Mapes expresses a deep disdain for conservative news blogs numerous times throughout her book (p. 7, 13, 195, 196), but at the same time she concedes:

"I was incredulous that the traditional press – a group I’d been a part of for nearly twenty-five years and thought I knew – was falling for the blogs’ critiques. (p. 13).… many reporters quickly and unquestioningly accepted the bloggers’ arguments." (p. 199).

Discussion and Conclusion. This case study allows us to answer affirmatively all three of the research questions raised in this article. First, whether they used blogs to get concrete evidence or just to generate story ideas, some traditional journalists definitely used blogs to assist their reporting. Second, blogs were indeed capable of pushing the CBS story onto the traditional media agenda. Third, in this particular instance blogs were capable of breaking the news faster than the traditional media. However, before addressing research questions more thoroughly and discussing implications, several limitations of the study should be mentioned.

Some scholars define a case as “an instance of a class of events” (George & Bennett, 2004: p. 17). The phrase “class of events” can mean any phenomenon of scientific interest that an investigator examines with the goal of developing theory or generic knowledge regarding the causes of similarities or differences among cases of that class of events. The case-study method is inherently effective at detailed exploratory description of some process or new phenomena (e.g., Gerring, 1998), and therefore, it was appropriate for the purposes of this investigation that examined a process of intermedia agenda-setting involving the political news blogs (see Schiffer, 2006) who successfully utilized case-study approach in a similar inquiry). Looking in-depth at the process by which news was made illuminates the unique role of blogs in ways not seen before.

We did not undertake this case study to make generalizable comments about all news stories or all blogs. Generalizability is not the point of most case studies (Stake, 1978), because cases tend to be chosen for their distinctive characteristics, not their typicality. Generalizable knowledge, however, can accumulate over the examination of multiple case studies. We acknowledge that the CBS scandal described here – like most cases involving important stories – in many ways is unique (e.g., it happened close to voting date, it involved several prominent public figures and one of the nation’s most famous journalists, etc.). However, in some regards this scandal is comparable to other high profile political and media scandals of recent years, such as scandals involving Trent Lott, Geff Gannon and others (e.g., revolving around political issue(s) or where traditional media was lagging behind the blogosphere in uncovering the story). The scandal, which resulted in one of the world’s most prominent television journalists stepping down as anchor and may have affected the outcome of the presidential election, is interesting and important in its own right.

Grassroots vs. Astroturfing (Footnote 6) We tried to be impartial in our investigation, and we should stress that the blogosphere by no means should be idealized. It may not always be a pristine environment where citizens deliberate on public issues and where honest ideas trump attempts at manipulation. The blogosphere attracts different individuals for different reasons (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2006) and while it does engage numerous individuals into a public discourse and help speed up the process of correcting traditional media’s mistakes or breaking stories, it may also be a convenient propaganda vehicle. Our case again may provide some insights.

The CBS scandal energized numerous political activists and political operatives, with cyberspace anonymity providing convenient disguise to their real identities. One of the most prominent figures in the scandal was a Free Republic reader with a username “Buckhead,” who was one of the first “netizens” to raise specific questions about the authenticity of the disputed CBS documents (Baxter, 2004). After several days of online and offline media frenzy over the documents, “Buckhead” turned out to be Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer who was involved in disbarment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton (Kurtz, 2004a, 2004b; Mapes, 2005). Was it significant or surprising that a key figure in the CBS scandal was a Republican Party activist? Or more importantly, could it make any difference if “Buckhead’s” identity was fully revealed from the start? The answer to both questions is: It is not clear. In normal reporting, journalists need to be aware of their sources biases or conflicts of interest, and this type of information might be weighed heavily in the interpretation and use of information. And journalists would certainly want to characterize the source of information. However, in the Memogate case, the identity of a key source was obscured behind the anonymity conventions of the blogosphere. The initial anonymity did not flag MacDougald’s words as partisan, and the ambiguity did give his words more authority because they had an air of credibility and minimum objectivity associated with communication coming from an ordinary citizen. The point we are making is that motivations of bloggers should undergo close scrutiny, especially considering anonymity and speed that characterizes much of the blogosphere.

Effects on Journalism. The conclusions of this case study are indirectly supported by the results of several surveys that show traditional media journalists as extensively relying on news blogs in their journalistic work (The University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy, 2005; The Annenberg Public Policy Center, 2005; Euro RSCG Magnet, 2005). This case study also illustrates broader impact of blogs on journalism, whose normative aspects are being challenged by the new media. Blogs in particular have been called the new form of journalism by some scholars (Robinson, 2006; Wall, 2005). The new media environment challenges traditional understanding of journalism in at least three ways. First, a significant portion of journalism practitioners seem to be returning to the historical roots of their profession – ideologically tainted reporting (Davis & Owen, 1998; Singer, 2005). Some journalists and media scholars regard the presence of personal bias and values to be less of a problem and pure objectivity to be a very complex notion that is rarely or even hardly achievable (Gamson, 1984; Gans, 1979). Historically, during the selection of stories for the front page of a newspaper or first minutes of a broadcast, reporters and editors made newsworthiness judgments that were based on personal values and understanding of what was important, and not on some objective standard (Tuchman, 1978). As a result, even the best efforts to avoid subjectivity may fail. However, some argue that objectivity can be achieved (Abramson, 1991). Still, the commercial successes of Fox News, political talk radio, and much of the blogosphere support the view that objectivity may be losing its long-held status (Davis, 1997; Davis & Owen, 1998; Rodman, 2006).

Second, journalism is becoming more open and transparent (Singer, 2005). In 1948, Paul Lazarsfeld argued that media organizations regarded criticism to be vital to our democracy, yet fervently resisted criticism directed at themselves (Lazarsfeld, 1948). Journalists often feel uncomfortable when the tables are turned and someone examines their work in a manner similar to the way that journalists examine the various institutions they cover. Historically, media organizations were able to remain a “black box” (Singer, 2005: p. 179) in terms of the ways their internal workways were presented to the outside world, in part because they were (and still are) successful and profitable businesses and until recently had few incentives to become transparent (Rodman, 2006). However, the blogosphere is changing this situation by the institutionalization of criticism directed at traditional media (Johnson & Kaye, 2004; Reese, et al., 2005), which, coupled with several recent high-profile journalistic scandals and other factors may have encouraged elite news organizations to create ombudsman positions and enact other measures to examine the in-house journalistic practices and investigate reported errors.

Third, blogs are part of the “new media” technology that according to Kovach and Rosenstiel (1999) forces journalists to put out allegations rather than properly vetted out information. The two former reporters convincingly argue that the current media environment, characterized by never-ending news cycle, where traditional media compete with websites and blogs for scoops, encourages reporters to put speculations and innuendos out to the public, often compromising on such basics of journalism as source identification and fact checking. This assessment is supported by recent survey data, which showed that today’s reporters cover stories they deem unimportant more often than thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago (Weaver, Beam, Brownlee, Voakes & Wilhoit, 2007).

Finally, it is important to consider another issue in conjunction with the CBS case study – timing, which is crucial during the major election campaigns. In this instance, the CBS report was broadcast several weeks before the actual voting took place, and therefore, the fact that blogs broke the story a day before the traditional media may seem inconsequential. However, had there been no blogs and had the story aired several days before the voting, what would have happened? Hypothetically, some traditional media organization could mobilize to quickly and thoroughly question the report. However, it is also plausible that by the time their questioning could reach the needed levels of publicity, it would be too late to make any difference.

In conclusion, this study has sought to raise questions about the shifts in today’s media environment. Specifically, we argued that the blogosphere has the potential to affect (if it hasn’t already) the news-creation and news-delivery processes. Whether through original ideas or dredging up of evidence to support bold claims, blogs have found a receptive audience among journalists. At this time it is difficult to say exactly how important blogs will be, or what aspects of the sociology of news they may influence more than others – all of that is contingent upon such factors as technological development, consumer adaptation of new technology, and governmental regulation of mass media. What is clear, however, is that blogs are capable of affecting the news-creation process and it is up to future researchers to answer the questions of exactly how much, why, and how that happens.

Footnotes

1. We use the term traditional media to refer to traditional corporate news media typically organized for a commercial purpose and supported by advertising, following norms of ethical behavior and balancing various sides of the story, often referred to by journalists as ‘objectivity.’

2. The address to this thread is http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210516/posts?q=1&&page=51 (accessed, March 2006).

3. The address to this thread is

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210516/posts?q=1&&page=101 (accessed, March 2006)

4. The address to this thread is http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210516/posts?q=1&&page=101 (accessed, March 26, 2006).

5. The address to this thread is http://powerlineblog.com/archives/007760.php (accessed, March 26, 2006).

6. UrbanDictionary.com, a leading compendium of Internet and other slang phrases, refers to “astroturf’ as “creating the impression of public support by paying people in the public to pretend to be supportive. The false support can take the form of letters to the editor, postings on message boards in response to criticism, and writing to politicians in support of a cause. Astroturfing is the opposite of ‘grassroots,’ genuine public support of an issue. Astroturfing is typically done by sending the same letter to every newspaper one can find. A certain number of newspapers will be duped into thinking that the letter is original and heartfelt when it is neither.”

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Last Updated: 12/18/11

APA Citation: Dylko, I. B., & Kosicki, G. M. (2006, August). Sociology of news and new media: How the blogosphere transforms journalism and changes news. Paper presented at the 2006 meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, San Francisco, CA.