so this is mass communication?

Remember when people were still experimenting with how to integrate bloggers into a media relations program (… and still are!)? Well, in the summer of 2004 the 2 major American parties decided to credential bloggers - alongside traditional media - to cover the nominating conventions.

For the most part, the parties treated them just like the regular media. There were special availabilities with politicos planned for them, they were given embargo’ed information subsidies … it was the real deal.

And so I looked at this coverage - analyzing every single sentence the credentialed bloggers wrote in their “coverage” during the week of the convention - to see if they were “biased”:

Sweetser, K.D. (2007). “Blog bias: Reports, inferences, and judgements of credentialed bloggers at the 2004 nominating conventions.” Public Relations Review, 33 (4), 424-428.

Public relations practitioners awarded bloggers media credentials in 2004 to the summer presidential nomination conventions. Using the Hayakawa-Lowry bias categories, this quantitative content analysis reviewed sentences posted by credentialed bloggers during the convention to examine blogger reports (attributed, unattributed), inferences (labeled, unlabeled), and judgments (attributed and favorable, unattributed and favorable, attributed and unfavorable, unattributed and unfavorable) to analyze potential bias in “coverage.”

Key words: bias, blog, media relations, credential, political public relations, campaign

I’d like to thank Dr. Steve Banning for his help on this project. He was the one who suggested I look into the Hayakawa-Lowry news bias method & in the end that was the best way for me to quantitatively determine bias.

Note: When PRR updates the PDF (from in press to published), I’ll just switch out the files so you can have one with page numbers.

Updated: PRR released the final version so I updated this entry with page numbers & am now linking to the final PDF as published rather than the proof.

A small collaboration I did with LSU doctoral student Emily Metzgar was recently published in Public Relations Review in their special issue on social theory:

Sweetser, K.D., & Metzgar, E. “Communicating during crisis: Use of blogs as a relationship management tool.” Public Relations Review, 33 (3), 340-342.

Abstract

Using a post-test only experimental design with control group, this study investigated the impact of blogs on relationship management during a crisis. Participants (N = 109) were exposed to a personal blog (n = 45), organizational blog (n = 46), or control (n = 18). Results indicate blogs impact the perception of the level of crisis an organization experiences. Additionally, relationships created through blogs impact the perception of crisis. Use and credibility were also investigated.

keywords: relationship management; crisis communication; blog

If you are interested in this topic, you should also check out some recent work by Tom Kelleher and Trent Seltzer - both UF alums, I might add.

Another piece from my research on how candidates used blogs in the 2004 presidential election was recently published. This article focused on candidate targeting of young voters through the campaign blog .

Sweetser Trammell, K.D. (2007). “Candidate campaign blogs: Directly reaching out to the youth vote.” American Behavioral Scientist, 50 (9), 1255 - 1263.

ABSTRACT: Blogs, Web pages that are frequently updated with posts arranged so the most recent post is at the top of the page, were widely adopted by candidates in the 2004 campaign. These online tools that are popular with young voters, though widely adopted as a “hip” technology, fell short of successfully targeting young voters. This content analysis found only 8% of all campaign posts on the official major-party candidate Web sites targeted youth (N = 106). Although Bush published fewer posts overall, he produced more youth-targeted posts than Kerry. The topics of posts, issues, and message strategies used in youth-targeted posts were analyzed. Additionally, the use of images was explored. The article concludes that campaigns failed to fully employ blogs as a strategic tool to reach out to young voters.

As I do more with the social media we saw used in the 2006 midterm elections, I am amazed at how far campaigns how come - yet stunned a bit on how much more could be done.

Anyone interested in the “youth vote” should check out this special issue in ABS (volume 50, issue 9, published May 2007).

As someone who works (albeit part-time as a Navy Reservist) in the Middle East & one who studies political messages on blogs, I can’t resist pointing to Middle Eastern scholar Marc Lynch’s new article “Blogging in the new Arab public” in Arab Media & Society. I found the link on his blog, when he was mentioning the new journal. 

In the article, he asks:

Do blogs represent a revolutionary new tool for Arab political mobilization? Can they break the filter of state-controlled media and give both non-Arabs and Arabs themselves direct access to real Arab voices? Can they provide the foundations for a new Arab public sphere?

 Want the answer? Read the article yourself - it is very easy to read. As one of my friends would say, “It is in English” (as opposed to overly schoarly academic-eze).

He makes this point, relevant to anyone interested in monitoring blogs for PR or keeping track of a public’s pulse:

While blogs clearly do not represent wider public opinion, they still do offer the interpretations of potentially insightful individuals and, collectively, can at least offer insights into the views of young, educated, well-off Arabs.

This ability to mass communicate, usurping the state information ministries, will create tension:

As blogs gain political relevance, bloggers will attract the attention of the repressive state security services. [ …]  Some countries, such as Bahrain, have insisted (with only partial success) that bloggers register under their real names. 

And this leads me to Bahrain, the center of my knowledge on the Arab world. I’ve spoken with local Bahraini bloggers & watched how state pressure has been applied (& openly blogged about) in the blogs there. 

The most notable thing happening in Bahrain blogs, in my opinion, is based on what Luke Schleusener’s article in this same issue focuses on: activism through blogs. Schleusener’s From blog to street: The Bahraini public sphere in transition hits on this very well.

An example of blogging activism comes with the latest campaign by top Bahraini blog Mahmood’s Den.  He uses his blog to promote the a-political “No Shi’i, No Sunni, Just Bahraini.”

Marc admits on his blog that much has evolved in Arab blogging since he wrote the aritcle, but this entire issue of the journal is worth a read for anyone interested in blogs, the Middle East or evolutions in society.

The first piece out of multi-cell survey collaboration looking at how communication professionals use blogs was published this month in the Public Relations Review: 

L.V. Porter, K.D. Sweetser Trammell, D. Chung and E. Kim, (2007) Blog power: Examining the effects of practitioner blog use on power in public relations, Public Relations Review 33, pp. 92-95.

Abstract

While blogs are not yet a standard public relations tool, practitioners use blogs to enhance their power within their organizations. Using an online survey of public relations practitioners, this pilot test examined the relationship between power and blog use. Three factored categorizations of blog use among practitioners emerged: routine information and research, interactive blog communication, and issues identification. Results showed differences based on power, between blog users and non-users, owner-practitioners and non-owners, among others.

Keywords: Power; Blogs; Weblogs; Public relations practitioners; Web; Internet

Thanks to Constantin for pointing out that the article finally hit the presses!

The Polish blog article I wrote with fellow Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme students, Alek Tarkowski and Justyna Hofmokl, and LSU master’s student Amanda Sapp was accepted & just published in the Journal of Computer-mediated Communication. The article is online - so enjoy!

Next week is Blog Week for the Florida Public Relations Association, an organization I have been an active member of since moving to Gainesville in 2001. They have a full slate of posts planned from 10-14 April, ranging from crisis communication and investor relations to the accreditation process. Like many practitioners and PR organizations, FPRA is cognizant of this new way to reach publics and communicate a message.

I recently collaborated with colleagues from LSU, University of Kentucky & Indiana University on an online survey of public relations practitioners in PRSA. When all is said & done we will have about separate 5 academic studies for journal articles & conference papers looking at blog use & perception of the tool among professional journalists & PR practitioners, as well as journalism & PR educators. (If you took our survey - THANK YOU!)

I don’t want to talk about it too much because possible reviewers might be reading this, but we had some interesting findings regarding the use of blogs in PR:

• Communication industry folks use blogs at a similar level to the nation overall (comparing our data with Pew numbers)
• Professional blog use is low across the board
• Journalists use blogs more frequently for day-to-day work than PR practititioners
• PR practitioners use blogs for strategic planning/tasks more often than jouranlists
• Both sets of professionals think a professional use of blogs should be taught to students
• All groups believe that blogging will increase over the next 5 years

More interesting than these simple data points is the feedback I received from people who had taken the survey.

Christie L. Goodman, APR, Communications Manager for Intercultural Development Research Association in San Antonio, wrote me to share how her local PRSA chapter is teaching members how to blog. She sent me the link to their chapter blog & told me how they are “learning by doing.”

Not all comments were favorable.

Some wrote back saying that blogs were stupid & they didn’t see a need to jump on the bandwagon of the “next big thing” of the moment. And others seemed short-sighted in the understanding of the differences of communication technolgooy, like this comment where the practitioner said:

I am skipping blogs & moving right on to podcasts.

Even though this is a metablog, I try to avoid metaposting as much as possible. But after getting a frantic e-mail from a friend of mine asking if I was still alive because my blog hadn’t been updated since November, I should probably explain myself.

I’m thrilled to announce that I will be joining the team in Grady College at the University of Georgia in the fall. This is an exciting move for me & I look forward to all of the opportunities there. So you can see how planning this move has kept me rather busy.

I have also spent the last few months working on some exciting blog projects. These projects include surveys & I didn’t want to “sensitize” my possible respondents if they happened to Google me & find this blog. I’m not the only one who feels that way - Tom Kelleher posted the same sentiments on his blog.

So this being a blog about blog research, it seems fitting I should update you on the all great studies being published. My blog research reference list shows the studies I’m aware of - but I know there must be more. Among my favorites are those by Tom Kelleher and Barbara Miller, Denise Bortree, and a conference paper from Trent Seltzer. You might call it an amazing coincidence - but all of these folks (save Miller) are University of Florida products.

This year at the National Communication Association at least two divisions at the conference have blog papers on the prestigious “top paper panel.” I know this because I wrote them. There could be more top papers - there certainly are plenty of papers about the impact and uses of blogs here - but I just haven’t found them yet (it is hard to search for topics in the program).

I say this not to toot my horn (though it certainly might seem that way) but to provide a status report on the state of blog research. I still get some reviews of my work back from journals saying they don’t understand why someone would research blogs. This exposure of blog research in the top paper panels is huge because it signals that not only can there be quality research about blogs - but also that blogs are worth researching.

I wouldn’t call blogs my life’s work - although it has been the focus of much of my work thus far - but I imagine that my interest in communication technology will continue to find me in this position of proclaiming why the next “big thing” is worth researching & examining how it is different from everything else we have known to that point.

Just as blogs are starting to get this hat tip from the academy, the mainstream press seems to have ended its love affair with blogs in that there are more “scare” stories out there talking about the *dangers* of blogs. Take the front page article in Forbes the November 14, 2005 issue (thanks to Jon Lundberg for pointing it out to me). The title, “Attack of the Blogs,” and the image of a muscular Arnold-like arm coming out of a computer screen to beat up a business man sums up the concept of the article. One pull quote refers to bloggers as “a bunch of sickos” who did “obscene and vile stuff.”

So, to me, it seems appropriate that the academy has endorsed this line of research because it now appears there is much more to examine in regards to the impact of blogs on society, personal communication, & the media.

In about 30 minutes I’m presenting “Political Cynicism, Political Uses, and Information Efficacy Among Readers of Celebrity Weblogs “, a paper that came out of my dissertation that I co-authored with Dr. Lynda Lee Kaid from University of Florida:

This study tests the effects of personalized and “stealth” political discourse on weblogs, or blogs, and its affect levels of political trust, information efficacy, and political uses/gratifications. By surveying readers of three different blogs (N = 1838), this study identified significant effects as a result of exposure to political statements on blogs. Indeed, there are differences in the levels of political cynicism depending on how political statements were communicated. Readers of non-political blogs are more confident in their level of political information and their ability to participate in politics. Finally, political uses/approaches and avoidances were examined, as were differences based on gender and age.

Before going into the specific findings, let me explain a bit more about the method. We looked for the association of political cynicism, information efficacy and political uses & gratifications (approach/use of blog for political information & avoiding blog’s political content) based on the type of political messages one reads on celebrity blogs. We used 3 celebrity blogs: blog with clearly labeled & somewhat traditional political messages (Wil Wheaton), blog with satirical and “under the radar” political messages (Dave Barry), & a blog with no political messages (Roger Avary). Respondents were recruited for the survey from a post by the celebrity on his blog.

The basic findings here are that

• Respondents who read the blog that never made political messages (Avary) were least cynical & there were differences between each blog group.
• Respondents who read the blog that never made political statements (Avary) reported the highest level of information efficacy.
• Respondents who reported the highest level of approach to the blog or use of the blog to obtain political messages were those read the blog that contained political messages in a very clear & straight-forward manner.
• Respodents who said that they were least likely to use the blog for obtaining political messages were those that read the non-political blog (Avary).
• There was no relationship between use/approach of a blog for political information & cynicism.
• There was a statistically significant - but very weak - relationship between avoiding political messages and cynicism.

I’m off to present this!