Blogging: Phenomenon and Danger

“There is a presumption that blogs have a symbiotic relationship with the news industry. This thesis is not uncontested.“

“It is not easy to answer the question of whether blogs operate inside or outside the media industry.“

”Bloggers rarely add new facts to a news story. They find bugs in products and news reports but rarely "unmask" spin, let alone come up with well-researched reports.“

Considering my paper is on the decline of the print newspaper industry and technological responses to this decline, these readings on blogging struck several different chords with me. Quite honestly, up until now, I’ve only been examining the formal response of news agencies to attempt to re-capture readership in this highly technological age. Yet after reading about these bloggers, it occurs to me that I’ve left out a very important technological response to the decline of print media if I ignore the blogosphere.

Above, I have listed three quotations that I find particulary interesting from Lovink’s article “Blogging, the nihilist impulse.“ Though I currently lack any empirical data to back up my impressions of these claims, from the other research I’ve done concerning online news sources, I see the institution of blogging as both a valuable and a dangerous resource for the transmission of information.
Blogs serve a valuable purpose in the transportation of information by virtue that they help to reduce individual transaction costs of wading through the vast amounts of information on the web in order to find articles of personal interest. With the explosion of online news sources, many that are updated several times per day, finding information of relative importance can be a daunting task for a person. However, by subscribing to a blog that represents one’s interests, a person can effectively avoid personally wading through this sea of information and simply click on a blog and either find links to articles of interest, or read summaries of the day’s news. In this regard, blogs seem to be an indispensable resource for linking individuals to articles and websites that interest them, thus facilitating a more rapid flow of ideas.

However, this ease of information sharing doesn’t come without costs. According to Lovink’s article, the Blog Herald estimates that about 100 million blogs exist worldwide – and hundreds of new blogs are created every week. This ease of allowing individual voices to be heard naturally allows not only well -informed and well- intentioned individuals to have their voice heard, but also individuals of the opposite types. Now, more than ever, it’s exceedingly easy to spread mis-information at lightning speed – be it subconsciously and maliciously or by a subconscious or unintended slip-up.

Though formal journalism isn’t always completely informed and objective, at least there are some informal (as well as formal) rules which govern the behavior of professional journalists. On the web, however, there exists basically a writing free-for-all. In all honesty, I’ve seen some blogs that I feel are better than most newspapers – but on the flip side, I’ve seen blogs that make me want to e-mail their listservs and expose the bloggers as uninformed lunatics.

Don’t misunderstand me: I fully support a free market in the sharing of ideas. However, I also feel that it is important to the survival of a nation to have a well-educated public. True, these two are not mutually exclusive – but I feel that the former could potentially pose a threat to the latter. Thus, it seems that individuals should be taught from a very young age (in school would be an optimal setting) to be responsible researchers and to read everything – both internet and non-internet sources – with a skeptical eye.