There’s some interesting numbers from a Morgan survey on the media discussed over at Andrew Norton’s place.
According to a media survey, blogs are now registering as a source of news, with 2% of people turning first to blogs for news of events in Australia, after scoring a ‘*’ last year. But TV (42%) and radio (21%) still dominate, reflecting their superior news gathering and delivery capacities. Slightly more people – 3% – turn to blogs for ‘political background’. I thought blogs might have done better on this question; this is one area in which I think some blogs do quite well.
But blogs have found their niche in providing ‘views and opinions of people like me’, with 7% of people turning first to blogs to have their prejudices reinforced.
Andrew has a bit of a jaundiced view of this, it would seem.
Overall, though, these figures remind us that blogs have very limited capacity to influence how the public sees the world. Our audience is mostly people who agree with us already.
I’m less pessimistic. I’ve never bought the more inflated claims made that blogs are akin to an 18th century public sphere, but it seems to me that the political opinion writing and broadcasting generally comes from a strong ideological place anyway, no matter what the medium. As suz suggested in her post on the MSM, you would hardly turn to Australian newspapers for unbiased comment. The fact that commentary doesn’t have some illusory objectivity and comes from an ideological position doesn’t mean it’s worthless, or an “echo chamber”. I think what blogs do at their best, and again suz’ comments thread is good evidence of this, is provide informed and intelligent views political commentary rather than the predictable hack work of much of the MSM. And that’s not to be underestimated as a contribution to public debate.
Mark, you’ve got a broken link: As suz suggested in her post on the MSM. The link refers back to this (your) entry.
The blogs are becoming a real alternative to the established print media.
What do the SMH, Daily Telegraph, Australian, Courier Mail, etc. mostly run? Exactly the same stories sourced from AP or AAP. Add in to that a bit of “OpEd” stuff from people with known biases, and you’ve got your basic blog capability.
All that the big papers have left is a bit of muckraking capability, in that they can get whispers from “government sources” of “sources within the opposition”.
And of course, in the economics, science and technology areas, blogs have it all over the newspapers – better qualified people who don’t have to fit the stories into a framework that some editor thinks Murdoch might be more comfortable with.
Link fixed – AW
“government sources� or “sources within the opposition�.
“I think what blogs do at their best …. is provide informed and intelligent views political commentary...”
Exactly. That is why I read blogs, to seek out some genuine insight into what is going on rather than rely in what is served up to me.
Piers Akerman was born for blogging. He loves the stoush. Here are a few responses of his to comments:
Also, something that’s been bugging me for some time.
According to the survey, 2% of people turn first to blogs for news. Amonst the Australian blogs that I read, quite a lot of bandwidth is spent on refuting the latest stupid editorial in “The Australian”. But only 0.67% of Australians buy “The Australian”.
A lot of people who buy the Australian only do so on Tuesdays for the job ads, and I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the rest only bought copies so they could find fodder for blog posts.
I’ve often wondered if The Australian really had much of a market among those who agree with its insane campaigns and extreme perspectives. But I suspect its influence lies much more in the degree to which its perspectives feed back into politicians’ ideas and statements than its readership. Just as with aspects of the Packer empire, it would be interesting to see whether post Rupert, News Corp wants to keep running with what one imagines as time goes by will be less and less of a commercial proposition.