Exploring the Political Blogosphere: Perceptions of Political Bloggers About Their Sphere

This study examines the relationship between news media and bloggers from the perspective of political bloggers. Working from the theoretical frameworks of media accountability systems (Bertrand, 2000 Bertrand, C-J. 2000. Media ethics and accountability systems New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. [Google Scholar]) and Brosius and Weimann's (1996) Brosius, H. B. and Weimann, G. 1996. Who sets the agenda?: Agenda-setting as a two-step flow.. Communication Research, 23(5): 561–580. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] models of agenda-setting and two-step flow, the article proposes a new model that includes political bloggers. Via an online questionnaire, the study examines the demographics of political bloggers, how they view the blogosphere, and how they perceive their relationships with the mainstream media. Results suggest that bloggers do tend to define their role in the blogosphere as an extension of traditional media, sharing similar norms and values such as accuracy, responsibility, and independence, and at the same time believe that they have an impact on politics and news and serve as an accurate source of political information and analysis for their readers. It seems hopeless. How can the newspaper industry survive the Internet? On the one hand, newspapers are expected to supply their content free on the Web. On the other hand, their most profitable advertising—classifieds—is being lost to sites like Craigslist. And display advertising is close behind. Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports. (Kinsley, 2006 Kinsley, M. 2006. Do newspapers have a future?. Time., September 25 Retrieved November 18, 2006, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1538652,00.html[PubMed] , [Google Scholar], ¶1)