Research review: Do UK political blogs influence broadsheet newspapers?

I submitted my PR Diploma dissertation at long last this week. It examined whether political bloggers in the UK have an influence on the media agenda of broadsheet newspapers.

I won’t go into the findings in depth as I plan to upload a pdf of the full thesis in due course.

But the findings were interesting and I’ve summarised the main points below.

• The study undertook a longitudinal evaluation of three case studies where it appeared UK political bloggers had influenced the broadsheet’s media agenda. These findings were then compared with data from interviews carried out with key journalists writing about the case studies issues in the MSM.

• The case studies were: the Charity Commission investigation into the Smith Institute; the Labour Party auctioning a copy of the Hutton Report signed by Cherie Blair and Iraqi translators’ asylum status.

• Results suggested that all three case studies displayed some evidence of media agenda-setting. All three cases appeared to act as trigger events (Dear and Rogers, 1996). That is online media events that occurred before the issues in question were picked up by the MSM – thus triggering media coverage.

• It also appeared that in all the case studies influential, high-traffic blogs – or networks of lower-traffic ones – acted as framing devices (Drezner and Farrell, 2004) around the story, pulling together key information and interpreting/analysing issues. This was reinforced by one journalists who admitted in an interview that he used blogs as sources of “comment” and “insight” for stories.

• Despite the above findings, 100% of the journalists interviewed claimed they did not use material from blogs when writing stories, while 50% of journalists said they did not even read blogs.

• Interestingly of the remaining 50% that did read blogs, one journalist indicated that he used blogs for insight into political parties’ grassroots members while another admitted “cross-fertilisation” between an influential blog and his stories.

• The general conclusion was that although on paper there appears – at least – theoretical evidence for media agenda-setting by UK political blogs results from the newsdesk indicate that for the majority, blogs are not a trusted source of news.

• The conclusion speculates this could be either the journalists interviewed are not being entirely open in their answers and that blogs play a bigger role in the newsgathering process or that there is agenda-setting going on but that this agenda-setting process in not linear, direct from blogs to the newsdesk. Instead it may flow indirect to the media agenda through either the policy agenda or public agenda or perhaps through an entirely unknown channel being opened up by the networked world of the internet.

• The thesis suggests further research – particularly from the critical perspective of Two-Step Flow  theory - is necessary to investigate these issues.

I’m hoping to tweak the thesis slightly and submit it as a conference paper in 2008, so if anyone has any feedback I’d love to hear it!

Technorati tags: PR, public relations, research, theory, agenda-setting, newspapers, blogging, politics

Comments

[Will McInnes]

Definitely interesting dude.

[Giles]

Interesting stuff Simon. I have to say I would have been amazed if trust hadn't come up. Plus I would have expected "journalists interviewed are not being entirely open in their answers" too. Osunds like a hell of a read, how many words did you tot up?

[Guido Fawkes]

Can you send me a copy of your dissertation?

[Tim Worstall]

There's one story where blogs most certainly did influence the broadsheets. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.
A blog post of mine (pointing to the sadly now gone Owen Barder's blog, as he was someone who knew what he was actually talking about, and another piece by me at the ASI)) was read by Danny Finkelstein and he then wrote a comment piece on it for the next day (he's said that this was his inspiration). That then led to the press furore about it all.

[Simon Collister]

Thanks Tim. I'd like to uybdertake some more research into this area and that case study is another good one I'd not known about.

[Kristine Lowe]

Hmm...I use blogs as a starting point for my reporting quite often. But I see the blogosphere a bit like a virtual pub: you don't go home and write up what some stranger said over a few pints as if it is the whole and unvarnished truth, but it's a great place to get ideas, input, leads - information that has to be examined further.

Of course, if you run into a regular you know quite well, and who you know is a director with the company he talks about, you will trust his account much more and perhaps not spend an equal amount of time backing it up: I don't treat online sources all that differently from how I treat real world sources.

Unfortunately, I see some journalists who, having just discovered blogs, leave behind all concepts of critical sense and just copy paste - especially if it's a newspaper industry source who've just jumped on the web 2.0 bandwagon -come to think of it: a bit like they copy paste what other online newspapers write on a daily basis...

[Charlie Beckett]

Hi Simon,
I'd love to see thesis when it comes out. I run Polis (www.lse.ac.uk/polis)at the LSE and have a book out in April which address in part the same subject. The case studies I looked at showed that on pure political reporting blogging is now engrained as a strand of the journalism. It won't replace mainstream journaism, but even the BBC's Nick Robinson has a blog where he says things he won't say on air. Blogs are only a minority pursuit with marginal impact, but they are definitely significant.
regards

[Adrian Monck]

Simon

Am I right in thinking you selected three stories where blogs did act as a primary source of information for political stories?

If so, to evaluate the wider influence of political blogs on MSM generally you surely need to consider all the political stories running where blogs were not an influence?

And aren't A-list pol blogs now MSM as much as - say - Private Eye?

Hope you post your work when its done. Good luck.
Adrian

[Simon Collister]

Hi Adrian

The study was a small and fairly exploratory really. It only examined broadsheet newspapers - so not general MSM.

The cases weren't picked on account of blogs being a primary source of info: in one case a tabloid ran the story before blogs picked it up.

Agree your point in terms of A-listers, but the study also covers a network of low-traffic blogs as well.

Importantly, while influence of A-listers could be seen as the Eye.... other effects - such as the network of readers/commenters etc contributing to the knowledge production of a story as well as fewer editorial constraints - all play an improtant part in the agenda-setting process.

[Tim Worstall]

Sadly, both the ASI post and Owen Barder's have disappeared into the mists of time. But this might be interesting.
http://www.barder.com/ephems/442

And this is the post he read (links are now alas dead).
http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2006/02/timmy_elsewhere_3.html

[Daniel Bennett]

Simon,
I'd be grateful for a copy of your dissertation when you've finished tweaking. I'm looking at how BBC journalists are using blogs for my PhD thesis. It would be interesting to compare their approach to blogs with newspaper journalists.
Thanks
Dan

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[MSC management dissertation]

Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up !!!

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