Does blogging really matter? An empirical examination of political activities and attitudes toward the mainstream media held by bloggers and personal website owners

Julie Jones and John G.Wirtz

Abstract

Howard Dean’s run for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination highlighted the potential power of a new tool in political communication—the Internet. But while much media attention focused on the role of the Internet as a fund-raising tool for Dean’s campaign (e.g., Williams, 2003), the campaign also used blogs to maintain connections to and draw information from active political participants, many of whom considered themselves to be alienated by the political stage set by mainstream media (Trippi, 2004).

Since the 2004 election, the number of people who host their own websites and blogs in the United States has rapidly increased (Rainie, 2005), and this increase is most pronounced for the youngest adult cohort (“Parents and Teens 2004 Survey,” 2005).  As more online users of media content also become producers of their own websites and blogs, pointed questions arise on how this shift from a passive to an active audience will challenge existing structures in media and political discourse (e.g., Gillmor, 2004; Jones & Himelboim, 2006; Kline & Burstein, 2005; Posner, 2005; Trippi, 2004).  Drawing from Gillmor's terminology, the current authors label this active segment of the online audience “citizen media producers.”

Even as the changes in media content consumption and creation have been observed, the implications of these changes are largely anecdotal (Gillmor, 2004; Trippi, 2004). For example, it is unclear what the actual impact of becoming an active media producer has on the attitudes and behaviors of this emergent group. Further, there is a question of whether citizen media producers hold different attitudes toward the institutions of power (i.e., political and media institutions) than the general population. Finally, it is unclear if behavioral differences (e.g., willingness to contact the government) emerge between this group of citizen media producers and those who use the Internet but who do not produce a blog or website.   

It is the goal of the current paper to begin to answer these questions. This will be accomplished by first analyzing data available from the Pew Research Center study of “The Internet and American Life” (i.e., March-April 2003; Rainie, 2005). Initial results of an analysis of the Pew data indicate that persons who have a personal website had watched a news program the previous day slightly less frequently than those who did not have their own website (χ2=.87, df=1, n.s.), while those who had a blog watched the news at a slightly higher rate than those who did not (χ2=1.51, df=1, n.s.). Likewise, owners of websites (χ2=.93, df=1, n.s.) and bloggers (χ2=1.81, df=1, n.s.) were slightly less satisfied with the direction of the country than those who do not produce personal media online, yet none of these differences were statistically significant.

The paper discusses implications of these findings, as well as presenting results from a pilot study that more thoroughly measures the attitudes and behaviors of citizen media producers toward political activity and the mainstream media. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research directions, as well as a theoretical model that may explain how this emergent group is different from the population in their political attitudes and news consumption habits.

References

Gillmor, D. (2004). We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People for the People. CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Kline, D. & Burstein, D. (2005). Blog! How the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture.  New York, NY:  Squibnocket Partners, LLC.

Jones, J., & Himelboim, I. (2006). Just a guy in pajamas writing or a grass root journalist? Framing the blogs:  Emergence of blogs in mainstream U.S. newspaper coverage (1999-2005). Paper submitted to the Newspaper Division at the 89th Annual Convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), San Francisco, August 2-6, 2006

Parents & Teens 2004 Survey.  (2005, November 2).  Retrieved from Pew Internet & American Life Project Reports:  Teen Content Creators and Consumers, December 15, 2005: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/166/report_display.asp

Posner, R. A. (2005, July 31).  Bad News. The New York Times, Section 7, p. 1.

Rainie, L. (2005).  The state of blogging. Retrieved from Pew Internet & American Life Project Reports: Technology & Media Use, July 21, 2005:   http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp

Trippi, J. (2004). The Revolution Will Not be Televised:  Democracy, the Internet, and the overthrow of everything.  New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Williams, M. (2003, December 7). Internet wiz boost Dean; Campaign chief alters the art of fund-raising. The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, p. B10.

Full Paper [pdf]

About the Authors

Julie Jones is a SJMC doctoral student at the University of Minnesota.
Julie's research interests center on the changing relationship between
traditional media organizations and individualized form of production and publishing such as YouTube.com. This inquiry is informed by Julie's twenty years as a television photojournalist and producer. This work earned her numerous Rocky Mountain Emmys, National Press Photographers Association, and Arizona Press Club awards. In addition, Julie is a faculty member of NPPA's Television Video Workshop which is a week-long storytelling workshop that draws participants from across the country and the world.