by jon on
Feb 29, 2008 at 9:50 am
Article: The Blogosophere as a Public Arena, Social Problems, February 2008.
Summary: In an age of mass media and giant corporate news agencies, many optimistically look to the internet as a new venue for non-elites to make their voices heard and push issues into the public discourse.
Ray Maratea analyzes the role blogs play in the competition for public attention and finds that blogs do, in fact, offer many advantages. Thanks to the speed at which blogs can be updated and the ability of blog posts to quickly spread through the internet via hyperlinking, blogs can be an effective means of drawing public attention to issues.
However, in other respects blogs aren’t as revolutionary as they may seem. For example, the blogosophere is very hierarchical, with a small number of blogs drawing most of the traffic. Additionally, blogs tend to use the same criteria as traditional media when deciding what is deserving of attention, such as drama and novelty.
by chika on
Jan 24, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Article: “Fat in the Fire? Science, the News Media, and the ‘Obesity Epidemic’.” Sociological Forum 23(1): 53-83.
Summary: Watch out for news reporting on weight gain and health crisis – you might be blaming yourself for recent weight gains more than you should. While the news media and medical science publications share much in their reports on obesity and health, news media dramatize the issue more, highlight our individual responsibilities more, and blame particularly the poor, racial minorities, and women more, Saguy and Almeling (Sociological Forum 2008) find. The exponential growths of reports on obesity and weight since 1980 are the same in both medical and news publications, but the news media have continued to beat the medical publication in the article counts since the mid-1990s. The expansion of media coverage and the preferred use of sensational words like “crisis” and “epidemic” might be flaring the issue of fat in the fire.