The Diminished role of Blogs in News Framing?

Recently we have read a journal article by Henry Farrell and Daniel W. Drezner tilted, “The Power and Politics of Blogs”. The findings in this article suggest that elite bloggers influence news framing by becoming a focal point of reference to the main stream media. Although what we did not discuss in class is the findings in this entry are not conclusive, they are only a beginning of future research in the photosphere.

“However, even if the blogosphere can influence the body politic, the extent of that influence remains open to question.”

This is what I was worried about the entire class period. The discussion we had seemed to lead us to assume that the influence from blogs was there when really the evidence can do no more than suggest an influence.

What I was most concerned about was the small amount of actual references the main stream media made towards blogs “between September 2003 and January 2004” when there survey took place. What the data showed was that in the span of 5 months the major blogs mentioned were mentioned very few time s one which was mentioned 78 times but this one was truly an out liner for the rest ranged from 1-16 mentions. My point is that these are the top read blogs yet they are mentioned very few times within the span of five months. Although I could not find data on the most highly referenced source for political information of the mainstream media, it does seem rather miniscule that the media would only reference the top read blog with an outlier at 78 mentions in 5 months in the presents of a 24 hour news cycle.

Another concern I had with this article is the wording that a certain survey finding had:

“Of those who used blogs, 55% reported that they use them to support the work that they
do in writing news.”

My problem is with the word “support”, it leads me to question whether the blog was really influential news framing, or the journalist had already developed a frame for the news and used the blog solely for support; in which case the role of the blog in news framing is diminished.