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In its processes of creating and disseminating news, the media aims to satisfy the public's needs for information and knowledge as well as entertainment. Beyond the traditional publication of news via traditional media such as print, radio or television, the new trend is accessing news online. Blogs, forums, social networks and search engines are all environments in which information is becoming increasingly visible, increasingly accessed and increasingly read. Warts and all: these means are defined by a series of characteristics, but they also conceal certain dangers: ideological polarization, filter bubbles, selective exposure etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the political blogging of the Malagasy diaspora as part of their transnational political participation. It focuses on three aspects of the blogs: the most frequent topics addressed, how are the topics addressed, and the political bloggers. To do this, a Thematic Content Analysis based on four categories ('soapboxes', 'transmission belts', 'conversation starters' and 'mobilisers') of four of their most active and influential political blogs was conducted. The analysis revealed that (i) the blogs are mostly "soapboxes" that consist of commenting the political issues in Madagascar, (ii) their contents were mostly focused on the coup d' état in 2009, and (iii) the bloggers are involved in direct political participation in parallel offline. This paper shows the role of the studied blogs as tribunes of opinions that gather a partisan audience discussing the Malagasy political issues, and as judgment tools contributing to the braking or fuelling of Madagascar's international relations. Résumé: Cet article analyse les quatre blogs politiques les plus actifs et influents de la diaspora malgache comme une forme de participation politique transnationale. Centré sur les sujets les plus fréquemment abordés, la manière dont ils sont abordés et le profil des blogueurs, une Analyse de Contenu Thématique basée sur quatre catégories (« tribunes », « courroies de transmission », « initiateurs de conversation » et « mobilisateurs ») a été menée. L' analyse a révélé que (i) les blogs sont majoritairement des « tribunes » consistant à commenter les questions politiques malgaches, (ii) leur contenu est principalement axé sur le coup d' État de 2009, et (iii) les blogueurs sont aussi impliqués dans une participation politique directe hors ligne. Cet article montre le rôle des blogs étudiés comme tribunes d' opinions rassemblant une audience partisane discutant des enjeux politiques malgaches, et comme outils de jugement contribuant à freiner ou alimenter les relations internationales malgaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opportunities offered by information and communication technologies have allowed many people to become political content creators. Usually, the produced content is not based on information made by professionals. The objective of this work is to analyze the relation between the tracking of political information in professional media and the production of political content in non-professional media. The study performs a secondary analysis of the data obtained by applying the statistical method to surveys published by the Spanish Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas between 2011 and 2016. Results show that there is a strong relation between the participation in blogs and forums and the use of the Internet to become informed about politics. It is also observed that there exists an association between the creation of political content and the tracking of programmes about politics on press, radio and television. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interviews with bloggers examine the ongoing use of blogs to cope with the persistent community stress New Orleans has experienced post-Hurricane Katrina. Previously, the field of media studies has overlooked blogs’ coping role. Cyber psychology has explored blogs’ role in individual and emotional coping, but not task-oriented efforts to ameliorate sources of community stress. Among other insights, the unique intersection of media studies and cyber psychology explored in this study illuminates the double-edged sword that is the imagined audience. While a positive source of social support, efforts to attract and maintain an audience can impose the perceived pressure to “keep face” and maintain an angry blogging persona beyond its useful cathartic value. Combining perspectives from cyber psychology and media studies, this study contributes a more multifaceted understanding of how residents may use social media to cope with individual and community stress than has been explored in previous research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Internet users' participation and the ways in which it is framed by journalists, with a particular focus on the Live Blog format. It provides a case study of the online media coverage of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York in May 2011, by the highly respected media Le Monde.fr. A lexicometric (statistical) and discourse (qualitative) analysis of two sets of corpora (Corpus 1 being composed of all the comments submitted by Internet users throughout the live blogging process and Corpus 2 of the few which were finally published on the Live Blog) will highlight the nature and the various forms of audience participation as well as the ways in which they are framed by journalists. The article aims to investigate the representativeness of the published messages and the participative audience profile which journalists foreground within this media space of multiple voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study discusses how activist citizen reporters in Turkey, who initiated a brand-new alternative new media practice, transformed news gathering and writing activities in the process of the Gezi Park Resistance, which erupted in Istanbul in June 2013. A handful of citizens, outraged by the police violence as well as interested in human rights from a journalistic perspective chose to create their own make-shift media outlets or to become medium themselves. They gathered and simultaneously disseminated news and broadcast live on many occasions mostly through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and livestream, in the absence of traditional mainstream and/or alternative media. They also contributed to the solidarity of the resistance. In this context, the theoretical framework of this study is based on concepts such as alternative media, citizen media and citizen journalism. Likewise, concepts like democracy, citizen and journalism are also re-evaluated from a radical perspective. After theorizing 'Çapulcu Media', a local variant of the Rodriguez's 'citizen media', constructed in the Gezi Resistance by a few activist citizen reporters, this ethnographic study concentrates on their activities in the field as well as the process of their identity formation based on data collected from in-depth interviews and continuous attention given to their social media accounts. Finally, this study aims to develop a critical understanding of a radical variant of citizen journalism in the context of contemporary Occupy movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In earlier times, news as depicted in print and broadcast media would be from the perspective of newsworthiness, proximity, dominant norms etc, but with the arrival of digital technologies and globalisation of media, there has been a greater shift to how audience perceive news. Earlier the journalists set the agenda for the audience to think about and were the gatekeepers for all types of news. Now they do not set the agenda buthave become guides and mentors for their audience. Participatory communication has always been an integral part of communication system. However active participation by receivers of information did not happen very much in the earlier times. With the coming of age of online journalism through digital media this has changed to some extent. People are using digital technologies and user friendly interfaces to make their presence felt online especially in social media which include weblogs or blogs, social networking and micro-blogging sites and becoming citizen journalist per se. Weblogs or blogs especially seems to be empowering people in diverse ways. Media persons now, have to assess differently, how they will have to function in this changing media scenario brought about by Web2.0 and increase in citizens' involvement in the production of media content for the web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has been critical of mainstream media’s attempts at blogging, with studies finding that journalists are maintaining their traditional gatekeeper function and failing to engage with readers. This study examines the work of 13 journalists who have political blogs on Australian mainstream newspaper websites, with data gathered from a content analysis of comment-threads as well as interviews. Surprisingly, the results show that most of these journalists are engaging with readers, and some have been doing so since July 2006. They regard such participation as an essential part of their blogging practice, and see their role as not only moderators but also facilitators of discussion. These results contrast with overseas studies which show there is a ‘minimalist’ view of participation that dominates in journalistic organisations in the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an experiment comparing traditional news reporting to citizen blogs, university students rated traditional journalism as more credible than citizen journalism. Also, participants assessed straight news articles as more credible than opinionated reports of the same news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A contemporary debate in media studies concerns participation and empowerment, and to what extent digital media shift power to the citizens. This study assesses the long-term viability of participatory journalism using Swedish content and user data. Inclusion of comments and blog-links on news sites increased from 2007 to 2010, and decreased rather dramatically from 2011 onward. Posting user comments or writing blogs have never been activities that have appealed to a majority of the Swedes. Participatory journalism seems to have decreasing value to producers and little appeal to users. A shift in how power is distributed in the public sphere is absent. This is not primarily a problem of reluctant producers but, more importantly, a lack of interest from users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article enriches debates about 'alternative media' by exploring what the term means to users through an audience survey ( n = 224). Responses revealed values and practices that respondents agreed were important to alternative media. Users deemed a wide array of media 'alternative': political blogs, public broadcasting, foreign sources, and alternative-press institutions, as well as The Daily Show, Facebook, Fox News, and The Huffington Post. Despite criticizing corporations and advertising, this audience considered some corporate, commercial outlets 'alternative media.' Respondents valued alternative content (neglected issues, diverse voices, mobilizing information) more highly than alternative form (being nonprofit, noncommercial, small-scale). I argue here that the dialectic of alternative media/mainstream media continues to provide a critical and cultural touchstone for users in a converged environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ways the New York Times has incorporated citizen videos from the Syrian conflict into its live blog, The Lede, is explored in this article. The analysis reveals the creation of a new journalistic element – the Collaborative News Clip – in which ordinary people are now producing immersive, emotional, multidimensional self-created videos that news outlets cooperatively incorporate into online content. The Collaborative News Clip is created through joint framing and shared gatekeeping by a tier of citizen-activists working with a professional news organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research delves what makes people read reports by citizen journalists. We first explain the importance of reading citizen journalism from the concept of two-sided markets. Then, we use UTAUT with mass collaboration to find the factors making people reading them. We found mass collaboration, performance expectancy, effort expectancy have positive impact on the intention to read citizen journalism. The role a reader chooses, either a reader or a reader and writer, can moderate the effects of performance expectancy, effort expectancy and mass collaboration on the intention to read. The degree of involvement also moderates the effect of effort expectancy and mass collaboration on the intention to read. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is no dearth of information about the uses of a blog as a Web 2.0 tool in the library, there is very little information about the ways in which a blog can be used to reach diverse and non-traditional groups. This paper explores blog topics and strategies that will help to engage users from diverse populations. It also explains ways in which librarians might frame their library blogs to be more inclusive of their entire community. Blogs can serve as excellent marketing tools for communicating resources, services, and events, but in featuring posts that include various populations, more users might become readers of the blog and may even develop an appreciation for the diversity surrounding them. The blog can then serve as a solid model for communicating and appreciating diversity. If their true power is harnessed, library blogs can reach larger groups and promote a more inclusive environment for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New media have changed the way people communicate and transfer information, but their effects on agenda-setting and the transfer of salience of objects and attributes have not been explored empirically. This study utilized a quantitative content analysis to determine how the blogosphere affects the agricultural policy agenda by analyzing a specific piece of policy that has the potential to effect agriculture. Results indicate a significant predictive relationship of the blogosphere agenda, media agenda, interest group agenda, and public agenda to the policy agenda. This adds new information on agenda-setting in an online environment by concluding agenda-setting occurs in new media environments similarly to traditional media environments. Future studies should consider the influence of the blogosphere on the political agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption was among the most serious problems under the rule of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Egyptian political bloggers played a critical role in reporting about the regime's corrupt policies which were among the main factors behind the 2011 Revolution. This study analysed a number of threads selected from four prominent Egyptian political blogs that dealt with the issue of corruption. The analysed threads were divided into three main categories based on the primary function they attempted to perform: public mobilization, documentation or deliberation. Findings showed that political bloggers have played a critical role in enriching, revitalizing and mobilizing the Egyptian civil society, particularly in the prelude to the 25 January Egyptian Revolution. Still, this study showed that the role played by digital media platforms, such as political blogs, in promoting civic engagement, boosting democratization, and aiding political change should not be exaggerated or overstated. In other words, there has to be caution in assessing these new media technologies' potential impact on reshaping the process of communication and democratization in the age of cyberspace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violations of human rights were among the most serious problems under the rule of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Egyptian political bloggers played a critical role in reporting about the regime’s infringements on human rights and freedom of expression. This study analyzes a number of threads selected from five prominent Egyptian blogs that deal with human rights violations. The analysis is divided into three main categories based on the functions the blogs attempted to perform: public mobilization, documentation, or deliberation. The analysis highlights the significant intersection between these three functions, which augmented one another and contributed to the democratization in Egypt in a manner that paved the way for the Egyptian revolution of January 2011. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen journalism has never been as strong as it is now. New technology and the Internet have influenced it a lot. The differences between the citizen and the professional journalism - or coopera-tion of these two elements - have become a discussed topic. There are two different views to the issue. Certain experts say it is impossible to compare the professional journalism to the citizen one. But some cases show that the citizen journalism is important part of current media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing new media to older media can help identify fundamental uses and perceived effects of communication technology. This study analyzes one soldier’s milblog (military blog) and one Civil War soldier’s letters and diaries to understand how milblogs compare to older forms of soldier correspondence. Despite the overt distinction in technical systems utilized, this analysis demonstrated that the communications through the milblog and letters/diaries share tremendous similarities. In composing their correspondence through these distinct media, each soldier maintained similar anxieties over technological affordances, perceptions of their audience, and motivations for corresponding. Though there were certainly differences in style and content, little that was done or accomplished via the milblog was without direct precedent in the Civil War letters and diaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Comunicación y Hombre is the property of Universidad Francisco de Vitoria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: Blogs have turned into a key part of the world’s online culture these years. Many world-famous websites are providing blog services in an attempt to make their own blog service at least comparable to others at minimum. The main purpose of the paper is to answer the questions, “What determinants matter when bloggers choose staying a particular blog site?” Are there the determinants existing any relationship among them? This study proposes a combined Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Partial Least Squares (PLSs) path analysis to advance our understanding of the processes involved in blog site evaluation from the perspectives of student-bloggers in Taiwan, during 2009/09∼2010/03. The results provide insight for those who are concerned with this topic. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] This paper draws attention to the personal weblogs written by Japanese migrant women in Australia. [•] Entries in these weblogs elucidate their daily experiences, thoughts, concerns, and feelings. [•] Blog data provide rich personal accounts of migrant experiences from the first-hand positions of migrants. [•] It critiques celebratory attitudes toward global mobility by discussing the disadvantages of migration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

At the age of big data, social media play a very big role in promoting on information flow and interaction. Social media can make information flow and spread widely and rapidly based on the mechanism of social network structure. So at the big data era, the impact of social media on traditional media is more far-reaching and mainly manifested in the following aspects: citizen journalism and professional media go halves on a fifty-fifty basis; personal website rise; social media press release. The traditional news media must actively deal with the challenge in order to win the initiative in the age of big data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists working in Antarctica have recognized the need to counteract problems associated with mainstream media's treatment of the climate-change crisis. For this reason, several of them have assumed the role of citizen journalists in order to report on the effects of global warming first-hand. More specifically, they have chosen to communicate directly with the general public through official or personal blogs. In so doing they are capitalizing on the way the Internet is changing science news and journalism. This article draws on an analysis of more than 50 Antarctic blogs published during the International Polar Year (2007-08), as well as data from e-interviews with a broad selection of bloggers, in order to examine how scientists 'on the ice' act as citizen journalists. The article explores the idea of citizen journalism as education and the extent to which the scientists achieve an unmediated form of communication through their blogging efforts. It concludes by suggesting this new form of citizen journalism, beyond raising people's awareness of the climate-change crisis, also signals an important way in which mainstream environmental reporting can be reinvigorated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study of the phenomenon of participatory journalism in Mozambique. The role of the popular blog Diário de um sociólogo, which was supported by eye-witness reporting by mobile telephone calls and text messages from a network of citizen journalists throughout the country, during the social unrest of May 2008 is discussed. The forms of journalism which emerged during the period are also described.

This article presents a comparative study about the evolution of the use of blogs in Spanish regional press to analyse if the performance of blogs has changed significantly on the basis of the content and the level of updating in recent years. A first analysis was conducted in 2006 when the boom of this phenomenon. Following a new analysis in 2009, this work carries out a comparison of the evolution of the same performance parameters in both years. It can be stated that no clear evolution patterns exist, that the number of blogs has no relation with the updating of these in either of the periods (the beginning period or the establishment period) and that the main difference detected is that in 2006 more attention was paid to the personal contents that provided blogs with the indisputable character of a tool for personal expression, while in 2009 bloggers appeared to be more interested in what is local and current. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disciplinary literacy has redefined the field of content area literacy and how teachers approach literacy instruction in the content areas. Yet, limited opportunities exist in teacher preparation programs for pre-service teachers to experience disciplinary literacy instruction and practice. This paper addresses this issue by describing a project imbedded into an undergraduate content area reading course for secondary social studies pre-service teachers. The project provided pre-service teachers with instruction that modeled disciplinary literacy strategies during coursework and opportunities for practice using those strategies through a blog project with eighth-graders in a social studies class. Findings suggested that pre-service teachers considered explicit strategy instruction and blogging to be useful and engaging tools to experience and practice using disciplinary literacy instruction in history. These findings support integrating opportunities for pre-service teachers to practice instruction, grounded in disciplinary literacy, using online platforms for discussion, such as blogging, with students. Pre-service teachers' perceptions of the project were considered to suggest implications for practice using this instructional approach [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism's transition from an industrial age to an information age and the unstable economics of profit-driven newsmaking have allowed for an unprecedented level of citizen input and involvement in the making of news. Here, new relationships between legacy and innovative newsmaking are forged and new models of newsmaking emerge. In this article, we discuss the case of The New Orleans Eye, an attempt at innovative newsmaking rooted in an individual citizen who started blogging in the wake of hurricane Katrina. The New Orleans Eye is a largely foundation-funded, non-profit online news organization composed of bloggers and former ink reporters, and has a unique relationship with the local Fox television station. We treat The New Orleans Eye as an example of a mixed-media system and discuss the tensions that emerge over innovative newsmaking within a context of a profit-driven legacy news industry and a neoliberal state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]