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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