Media Attention in the Age of the Weblog - Will Blogs Make News More or Less Global?

Ethan Zuckerman

Abstract: Weblogs are revolutionizing journalism, allowing a new group of amateur citizen journalists to complement and challenge professional journalists. How are news stories flowing from mainstream media into weblogs, and vice versa? Is there a pattern to what stories bloggers "amplify" from mainstream media? Will weblogs be able to help journalism conquer one of its most persistent problems - a failure to report news from the developing world? Or will the demographic biases of webloggers help reinforce mass media's tendencies to report on wealthy nations? My talk explores these questions (and the history behind them), presents ongoing research and explores new strategies for investigating these questions.

WWE2005