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.