Online "facts" & "opinions"
Some further illustration of our cautious approach towards mining online facts and opinion (see our article 'Is Anybody Out There Listening?' in July's Research magazine for more details - subscription required) for research purposes today.
First, on opinions, from BusinessWeek - news that bloggers are now being offered cash rewards to favourably mention products on their blogs. Product placement on blogs is just another barrier to effective online research and raises the question - how you can ever be sure who's doing the talking when you're reading online opinions?
Second, on facts, from American satirist Stephen Colbert - a brilliant take on Wikipedia (via YouTube). The wisdom of crowds? Wikipedia may be an excellent online resource for some starting info - but always make sure you double-check those "facts" (thanks to Michael Calore at Wired mag for pointing me in the direction of this one)
posted by Nick at 11:44 AM
2 Comments:
I also picked up a special on blogs in the German news mag 'Der Spiegel'a couple of weeks ago (shame most of you monolinguists won't be able to read it) making some of the same points as our article.
Though, as has been pointed out by some readers' letters in this week's edition some of the more luddite of the printed media have a bit of a vested interest in portraying blogs as uninteresting trivia on people's visits to the hairdresser in order to maintain their 'authority'.
Following on from your comment Sabine, true they do – but other sections of the media are also embracing (or at least trying very hard to understand and get involved in) blogging. It is true that they want to hang onto their readership and the blogging movement is forcing them to come to terms with interacting with their audience in a way that they aren’t used to. This change is uncomfortable and even pioneering newspaper blogs such as the Guardian’s Comment Is Free have come under fire for not understanding what this new approach to media is all about:
http://strange.corante.com/archives/2006/06/04/comment_is_fked.php
This doesn’t avoid the fact though that blogs are still largely derivative – see Malcolm Gladwell’s well-put response to the ire of one (in my opinion) over-zealous blogger (of whom there are many!):
http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/07/the_derivative_.html
Blogs are not uniteresting trivia and any news organisation suggesting that they are does so at their own risk. But they are also not newspapers and are unlikely to replace them anytime soon – despite the pronouncements of some commited bloggers. They may force big change in how newspapers operate, to a more participatory model, but there will still be a need for professional journalists and for at least partially non-partisan views.
At the end of the day, we aren’t all going to want to read our news in the style of a conversation. And as anybody who reads blogs regularly knows – part of their appeal but part also of their unexpediency is their circular nature.
As for authority – newspapers will inevitably lose some of this. The mere fact that they are having to allow people to answer back is seeing to this. On the other hand though, there is something to be said for having the overarching narrative that papers provide – and despite what many bloggers will have you believe, they still use the MSM for a lot of their sources (whether that be first, second or 1000th hand).
Any enlightened newspaper editor is already trying to comes to terms with blogs – which will force (big) changes. But we don’t need to pick sides here – the two medium can and will have to learn to co-exist. I suspect they will also come to more closely resemble each other as they do so – both have lessons to learn from the other
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