Mapping The Blogosphere Article Critique

Research and topic researcher(s): Mapping the blogosphere: Professional and citizen-based media in the global arena, by Hyun, Jeong, Reese, and Rutigliano, in Journalism 8:3 (2007), pp. 235-261. Retrieved from Communication and Mass Media Complete, on October 1, 2007.

Rationale of the study:
To find out how and by what source political weblogs are being created by 1) citizen-based or professional news sources and 2) how they compare to more traditional types of media being consumed by news audiences.

Literature Review:
Globalization has increased the amount of worldwide communication “blogging” and because of that people have the freedom to be able to experience a larger spectrum from which they can obtain news as well as receive diverse opinions.
New technologies have influenced and changed both how news is covered or made as well as how it is being obtained and perceived.
The credibility of the source by professionals is more informal than that of the citizen-based which is non-traditional, but can be complementary of one another.
The issue of online overlap, links, recommendations, and blogrolls forces the audience to see a one-sided message.
Audience members can access specific blogs whenever and wherever they want and need.
The author finds that by blogging information is circulated form citizen-based to professional news media. By doing so professional based media is being critiqued and opinionated over but is also providing a message that may or may not be bias.
The blogosphere provides room for further analysis and critique by individuals than just that of traditional news media, but by doing so the original content or message may be lost or misinterpreted because of the interaction of the audience participants.
Blogging provides another media from which people may obtain their political information.

Research method:
The methods were focused on that of research, content, and network analysis of political news blogs.

Subject of the study:
The study was six of the most popular news and political professional weblogs in comparison to other weblogs and the traditional professional news media in the USA and internationally (Talking Points Memo, Atrios, Daily Kos, Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, Little Green Footballs).

Research findings:
· The public sphere is networked to three important boundaries: professional, political, and geographic.
· The blogosphere is used mainly by citizen communicators but is heavily reliant on professional news sites and stories by journalists associated with professional media organizations.
· Blogging promotes the circulation of public dialog associated with other bloggers based on the discussion of mainstream media information.
· The blogosphere uses both citizen and professional voices to extend the public sphere beyond traditional news media boundaries.
· Future studies should be able to further explore bloggers with different occupational backgrounds.
· Blogging may help detour over-polarization because of the large amount of varied opinions.
· The blogosphere across national lines- the geographic boundary- is still underdeveloped but bears further examination.
· For the future the question will be how to incorporate the two separate zones of communication into the larger public sphere and work on interconnecting voices, both citizen and professional, so they may confront and engage each other.

My own position on this scholarly essay:
The Article is well presented by using the scientific methods approach to writing a paper making it clear to follow and read. I am personally new to blogging, and after reading this article it has given me an insight to how blogging has affected and influenced communication. Because of the rapid changes in technology I believe that it is however important to keep communication such as this widely available for people to use and understand.

Although this research focused mainly on news and political blogs I know that blogging is a huge part of the Internet and can vary immensely in topics and purposes. I believe it is important to know how to use and interpret the Internet and websites correctly to obtain the most efficient information needed (scholarly knowledge vs. bias opinions or things just made up). This is why at Hamline we spend a large amount of time learning how to find and critique scholarly and non-scholarly articles while doing research.