OII SDP 2007 (VI): The Impact of Political Blogs on the American Electoral System

Student research seminar: Erica Johnson

As a first-year doctoral student, I’m still exploring my research area: blogs as a form of media influencing American democracy. I’m hoping that my presentation will allow me to get feedback on how to narrow down my research question, what methodology(-ies) to use, and how to avoid the “beginning stages” pitfalls that many of you have already experienced.

Political blogs: as a form of media, as an influence on American democracy. Political blogs as a form of political journalism during the 2004 debates; political blogs as politcial as agenda setters for the mainstream political press during the 2004 presidential debates.

Questions

  • How to focus the scope of the work?
  • How to select sources
  • How to measure impact or consequences?

My reflections

  • are blogs media? citizenship journalism?
  • agenda (program setters) vs. agora (debate shapers)
  • by politicians vs. about politics
  • governments vs. parties
  • parties vs. partisans
  • partisans vs. press blogs
  • partisans vs. independent A bloggers
  • individual vs. collective/institutionally written
  • study blogospheres / rings to avoid biases and/or strong correlations
  • audience, citations
  • Technorati, BlogSearch, BlogPulse, Alexa, PageRank

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SDP 2007 related posts (2007)

If you need to cite this article in a formal way (i.e. for bibliographical purposes) I dare suggest:

Peña-López, I. (2007) “OII SDP 2007 (VI): The Impact of Political Blogs on the American Electoral System” In ICTlogy, #46, July 2007. Barcelona: ICTlogy.
Retrieved month dd, yyyy from https://ictlogy.net/review/?p=571

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