Bloggergate: How the CBS National Guard Story Affected Coverage of Webloggers

Bloggergate: How the CBS National Guard Story Affected

Coverage of Webloggers

J. Richard Stevens, Ph.D.International Symposium on Online Journalism

April 9, 2005

Walter Lippmann, 1920

• “The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy.”

Where do Weblogs fit in?

• Are they amateur participants in the “priestly duties” of journalism?

• Do they empower the critical debates that form our democracy or do they drown them out in the noise of spectacle?

• CBS Bush National Guard Story

Purpose

• How does the “MSM” respond to “blogswarms”?

• Analyze short-term impact of the blogswarm surrounding the CBS story on New York Times reportage of blogs.

Research Questions1. What effect did the CBS guard story

controversy have on the frequency of New York Times stories mentioning Weblogging and bloggers?

2. Did the CBS controversy lead the New York Times to increase the number of stories about specific blogs or bloggers?

3. Were New York Times stories more or less likely to define blogs or blogging terminology in stories after the controversy than before the controversy?

Research Questions

4. Did the CBS controversy lead the New York Times to increase their use of blogs as sources in their stories?

5. Did the CBS controversy cause the New York Times to publish more blog addresses in their stories?

6. Did the CBS controversy cause the New York Times to frame Weblogs as in conflict with traditional journalism?

Method

• Collected NYTimes stories containing blog terminology from June 6, 2004 to December 1, 2004.

• Terms = “blog,” “Weblog,” “Web log” and “blogger”

• 168 stories• Content Analysis - counting

attributes and frames• Intercoder reliability= .9617

Effect of blogswarm on frequency of blog stories

• 54% increase in the number of stories mentioning blog terminology

• 45% increase in the stories profiling particular blogs

• 45% increase in the citation of blogs a source in a story

• 35% increase in the number of stories containing blog URLs

• 50% increase in the number of stories containing the conflict frame.

Chart #1: Sample comparison

66

22

2

24

14

60

102

32

1

35

19

96

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# stories AboutBlogs

Definiton CiteBlogs Addresses Conflict CBS

Variables

# of stories

Pre 9/8Post 9/8

Chart #2: Number of Blog Stories

4 4 4

7 78

4 4

8 8

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18

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6/16-6/226/23-6/296/30-7/67/7-7/137/14-7/207/21-7/277/28-8/38/4-8/108/11-8/178/18-8/248/25-8/319/1-9/79/9-9/159/16-9/229/23-9/299/30-10/610/7-10/1310/14-10/2010/21-10/2710/28-11/311/4-11/1011/11-11/1711/18-11/2411/25-12/1

Week

# of stories

Chart #3: Stories About Blogs

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6/16-6/226/23-6/296/30-7/67/7-7/137/14-7/207/21-7/277/28-8/38/4-8/108/11-8/178/18-8/248/25-8/319/1-9/79/9-9/159/16-9/229/23-9/299/30-10/610/7-10/1310/14-10/2010/21-10/2710/28-11/311/4-11/1011/11-11/1711/18-11/2411/25-12/1

Week

# of Stories

Chart #4: Stories that Cite Blogs as Sources

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6/16-6/226/23-6/296/30-7/67/7-7/137/14-7/207/21-7/277/28-8/38/4-8/108/11-8/178/18-8/248/25-8/319/1-9/79/9-9/159/16-9/229/23-9/299/30-10/610/7-10/1310/14-10/2010/21-10/2710/28-11/311/4-11/1011/11-11/1711/18-11/2411/25-12/1

Week

# of Stories

Chart #6: Stories That Cite Blogs/Addresses

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6/16-6/226/23-6/296/30-7/67/7-7/137/14-7/207/21-7/277/28-8/38/4-8/108/11-8/178/18-8/248/25-8/319/1-9/79/9-9/159/16-9/229/23-9/299/30-10/610/7-10/1310/14-10/2010/21-10/2710/28-11/311/4-11/1011/11-11/1711/18-11/2411/25-12/1

Week

# of Stories

CiteBlogsAddresses

Chart #7: Conflict Frames

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6/16-6/226/23-6/296/30-7/67/7-7/137/14-7/207/21-7/277/28-8/38/4-8/108/11-8/178/18-8/248/25-8/319/1-9/79/9-9/159/16-9/229/23-9/299/30-10/610/7-10/1310/14-10/2010/21-10/2710/28-11/311/4-11/1011/11-11/1711/18-11/2411/25-12/1

Week

# of Stories

Chart #8: Number of Stories with Conflict Frames/CBS References

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6/16-6/226/23-6/296/30-7/67/7-7/137/14-7/207/21-7/277/28-8/38/4-8/108/11-8/178/18-8/248/25-8/319/1-9/79/9-9/159/16-9/229/23-9/299/30-10/610/7-10/1310/14-10/2010/21-10/2710/28-11/311/4-11/1011/11-11/1711/18-11/2411/25-12/1

Week

# of Stories

ConflictCBS

Thoughts and Conclusions

• Relationship developing more gradually

• Blogs not as powerful as they like to claim

• Benchmarks for other events