German Language A-List-Blogs: Reinforcement of the Mainstream Media

Agenda or a Challenge to it?

Martin Zuber, M.A.

Research Agenda

 What are A-List-Blogs?  What role do they play in the Mainstream Media

Agenda Setting Process? (Literature Review)  Criticism: Recepients not taken into account  Research Questions  Data  Methods  Results  Added Value

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What are A-List-Blogs?

Figure 1.: Top 100 most linked weblogs on Technorati effective 24.01.03 Source: http://kottke.org/03/02/weblogs-and-power-laws

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What are A-List-Blogs?

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  German language A-List-Blogs like netzpolitik.org or bildblog.de have more than 30.000 visits per day. (Interview with Beckedahl and Niggermeier (2009) on http://philipbanse.de/)

Figure 2: Connection of public and relevance. Adapted from: Katzenbach 2008, 108

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The Agenda Setting Hypothesis

 “The power of the news media to set a nation’s agenda, to focus public attention on a few key public issues, is an immense and well documented influence.” (Wallensten 2007, 568)

The Role of A-List-Blogs in the Agenda Setting Process?

First Perspective  A-List-Blogs are an reinforcement of the

mainstream media agenda because they tend to rely primarily on established media outlets for their information. (cf. Adamic and Glance 2005, Haas 2005, McKenna 2007)

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The Role of A-List-Blogs in the Agenda Setting Process?

Second Perspective  A-List-Blogs emphasize the remarkable

information in the blogosphere by linking to posts of small blogs. Hence A-List-Blogs are challenging the dominance of mainstream media by linking to alternative news providers. (cf. Dezner and Farrell 2004, Holler et al 2008)

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Criticism: Recepients are not taken into account

 The existing studies only investigate the content provided by the A-List-Blogs

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Criticism: Recepients are not taken into account

 To assess the role of A-List-Blogs, we need to analyze the effects on the audience

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Research Questions

 1. Is the content provided by A-List-Blogs an reinforcement of the mainstream media agenda or a challenge to it?

 2. Do the recipients prefer the mainstream media or the alternative issues?

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The Data

 K. Burton, A. Java, and I. Soboroff. The ICWSM 2009 Spinn3r Dataset. In Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2009), San Jose, CA, May 2009.

 A set of blog posts from 1 August 2008 – 31 October 2008

 All Languages  About 130 Gigabytes

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Comparison of total link count on A-List-Blogs: Spinn3r vs. Technorati (03.12.08)

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Correlation: -> .619 Level of significance: -> 1%

Comparison of links on A-List-Blogpost: Spinn3r versus rivva (14.08.09)  vhhoi

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Correlation: -> .721 Level of significance: -> 1%

Methods

 Which are the German language A-List-Blogs?  Sifry (2006): „The Very High Authority Group“ are blogs

with more than 500 links in the last 6 months  www.deutscheblogcharts.de  Within this time frame: 12

German language Blogs 500+ links

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Methods: Content Analysis

 Time frame: 1 – 14 August and 12 – 25 September 2008 Two weeks in every month – from Friday to Thursday

 Found 852 posts in the data set for this time frame (unfortunately no post of nerdcore.de -> only 11 A-List-Blogs in the sample)

 Analyzed a 50%-random sample -> 30 posts used for the pretest -> 411 Posts

 Analysis unit: A-List-Blog post

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Methods: Content Analysis: Coding Frame

 To identify which posts are based on mainstream media information (RQ 1)

1. Coded the links to online mainstream media pages (intercoder reliability = .86)

2. Coded references to offline mainstream media sources (intercoder reliability = .92)

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Methods: Hyperlink analysis

 To analyze which content is preferred by the recipients (RQ 2)

-> Searching Posts in the data set, which are linking to the A-List-Posts

Found -> 263 links -> 1 post got 16 links -> The most got 0 links

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Results: Content Analysis

 Just 106 posts (25.8%) are based on mainstream media sources. 305 posts (74.2%) have alternative or no sources.

 Answer RQ 1: Looking only at the content provided by the A-List-Blogs -> we would suggest, that they are more a challenge than an reinforcement for the mainstream media agenda

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Results: Content Analysis

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Results: Content Analysis

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Results: Content Analysis

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Results: Hyperlinkanalysis

 Posts without mainstream media source -> Mean = .59 links

 Posts with mainstream media source -> Mean= 1.14 links

 This difference is significant on 5%-Level.

 Answer RQ2: The blogger (recipients) tend to link more to posts with mainstream media content.

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Why?

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Results: Hyperlink analysis

 Reception studies

-> News factors indicate relevance (cf. Eidlers 1997)

 News Value Research

-> News in mainstream media -> biased -> extend News Values

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Results

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Added Value

  It is important to include the audience to decide which role the A-List-Blogs play in the agenda-setting process

 Though A-List-Blogs present more issues from alternative sources -> the small blogs tend to link more often to issues of mainstream media sources

 The reason for that -> usual mechanism of reception   Issues form mainstream media contain more news

factors

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Q & A

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Literature

Adamic, L. and N. Glance. (2005). "The political blogosphere and the 2004 presidential election." Retrieved 03.08.2009, from http://www.blogpulse.com/papers/2005/AdamicGlanceBlogWWW.pdf.

Banse, P. (2009). "Interview mit Markus Beckedahl." Retrieved 10.03.2010, from http://philipbanse.de/wp/.

Banse, P. (2009). "Interview mit Stefan Niggemeier." Retrieved 10.03.2010, from http://philipbanse.de/wp/.

Drezner, D. W. and H. Farrell. (2004). "The Power and Politics of Blogs." Retrieved 13.10.2008, from http://www.danieldrezner.com/research/blogpaperfinal.pdf.

Eilders, C. (1997). Nachrichtenfaktorenund Rezeption. Eine empirische Analyse zur Auswahl und Verarbeitung politischer Information. Opladen, Westdeutscher Verlag

Haas, T. (2005). "From "Public Journalism" to the "Public´s Journalism"? Rhetoric an reality in the discourse on weblogs." Journalism Studies 6: 387-396.

Holler, S., S. Vollnhalls, et al. (2008). Focal Points und Journalisten - Bedingungen für den Einfluss der Blogosphäre. Kommunikation, Partizipation und Wirkungen im Social Web. Grundlagen und Methoden: Von der Gesellschaft zum Individuum. A. Zerfaß, M. Welker and J. Schmidt. Köln, Herbert von Halem Verlag: 94-111.

Katzenbach, C. (2008). Weblogs und ihre Öffentlichkeiten. Motive und Strukturen der Kommunikation im Web 2.0. München, Verlag Reinhard Fischer.

McKenna, L. (2007). "Getting the word out: Policy bloggers use their soap box to make change." Review of Policy Research 24: 209-229.

Wallensten, K. (2007). "Agenda Setting and the Blogosphere: An Analysis of the Relationship between Mainstream Media and Political Blogs." Review of Policy Research 24: 567-587.

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