Marcus Parisian
Prof. Ishida
Mass Comm
October 5, 2007

Scholarly Article Critique
Research topic and researcher- Mapping the Blogosphere: Professional and Citizen-Based Media in the Global News Arena, by Reese, Rutigliano, Kideuk, and Jaekwan, in Journalism 8:3 (June 2007), pp. 235-261. Retrieved from Communication and Media Complete, on October 1, 2007.

Rational of the study- The study was done for a few reasons. Research was done on a few different blogs that included politics and news. These views were mainly focused on liberal and conservative and asked the following questions: 1- “What extent do blogs link to the professional news media and how are those references characterized?” (p. 241). 2- “How is political affiliation of blogs related to their linking to professional news media?” (p. 241). 3- “How is political affiliation of blogs related to the affiliation of their linking choices?” (p. 241). 4- “How is political affiliation of blogs related to their linking to international sites and authors?” (p. 241). These questions are asked to help the understanding of influence that bloggers create by this new trend on the web.

Literature Review-
• Political participation has gone global (237).
• “Internet’s potential for advancing more engaged and active citizenship around the world” (237).
• Journalism is a way to bring out conversation to the world (237).
• “Professional identity are changing technological capabilities,” especially in communication (237).
• Journalism online is now spreading to such a large range, “from mainstream news sites…to the sites that encourage a more open journalistic culture” (237).
• “Globlization and technology have produced a broader and more fluid journalistic conversation, a new global public sphere” (237).
• Content today that is online is still bombarded by the professional media like CNN, Yahoo, MSNBC, etc. (239).
• Many blogs of liberal and conservative themes were linked together (240).
• Even boundaries today are being pushed back, and given opinions from more than one perspective. For example US citizens talking about the war in Iraq, and then Iraqis talking about the war too. (240)

Research Method- The most used method was probably content analysis. The researchers searched the six different blogs and read what people had to say, how they said it, what perspective they were saying it, the importance of what they were saying, and who was reading what they had to say. It was an in depth looks at people’s point of views and how other people responded to those views.

Subject of the Study- There were six different blogs, Talking Points Memo, Atrios, Daily Kos for the liberal. And the conservative were Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, and Little Green Footballs. (p. 242). Both liberal and conservative blogs were looked into how the boundaries of blogs are changing the way people interact and think about world issues. Each blog was carefully chosen and watched over to see what bloggers had to say. Then for each post, it was ranked or coded by the material.

Research Finding- All the blogs had a few comments, with the Daily Kos having the least at 14.8. Blogs were searched to also find first hand information. Three out of the six had no first hand observations making the material very opinionated but two out of the six came from liberal blogs. A majority of the blogs are linked with stories regarding the topics that are being talked about. These links are also a rating to see what stories are related to the blogging.

My Thoughts- I thought the research was well done. At times the writing got confusing, and the results being graphed can be over whelming. My personal thoughts about the research was that they did a good job on working with the changing of the web and the blogs. To stay updated and keep up with there work is tough to do, when it changes from day to day.
Some of the negative things that the researchers had done were get away from that simplicity at times. For procedures, they went further out of their normal realm and got a little complicated on what they were doing and why they did it. It made me come up with more questions about the significance of the procedure. However, the results explained a good portion of the reasons why. In all, the research was very well done, and related to my thought with the opening of the blogosphere.