The Influence of Web Punditry
There’s an interesting piece in The Guardian this week about the influence of bloggers on the larger news stream. Bloggers are not only staking a claim as information trendsetters on the web, but they are also dictating the directions that conversations take in society. The report, put together by Jupiter Research, states that topics start within the “small media” world (blogs), then quickly become the subjects of discussion in the “big media” world (established news sites). Furthermore, these ideas and discussions move out into society at large. The result is that blogs are shaping the way we think as a society — even citizens who aren’t on the web are influenced by the discussions in the blogging world as the ideas trickle out to local papers, TV news, and the grocery store checkout line.
From the article, a quote from Jupiter’s Julian Smith: “[Bloggers are] not representative of the larger audience, but what they’re saying does matter,” he said. “It’s a good straw poll - a snapshot of the verbal conversations going on that we can’t measure.”
As Jeff Jarvis has eloquently stated, a blog “is a distributed conversation brought together by links.” I’d go one step further and say that the links bringing the conversation together aren’t necessarily all of the HREF variety.
Although the Jupiter report quoted in the Guardian article concentrates on European web users in particular, I would argue that the same trends are evident stateside.
[link via plasticbag.org]
