The Power of Blog

C-Span 2 aired a summit on broadcast media ownership last night. Simply put, on one side of the panel were those who favored media consolidation and on the other were those who supported media diversification. Most of the audience -- like most of us -- was in agreement with the latter.

A few of the panelist mentioned competition from the burgeoning internet news and information market like this is a bad thing, saying it may push more traditional news outlets out of business. This is not entirely true. As more and more get their news from electronic sources, the broadcast and print medium are being forced to evolve to compete. Competition is a good thing. The more players there are in the media, the more they are forced to better themselves.

Enter the blogosphere. The blog has revolutionized the political sphere. But should the public trust bloggers as an authoritative information source? As Nate from the Online Reputation Management Blog says:

In a time when people are consciously participating and relying more and more on the internet, in particular blogs, as their one-stop source for political news, opinions, and goings-on, who are we putting our trust in? . . . Looking to them as an authoritative source of information thus may not be the best thing to do before making a decision on who you will vote for in the coming mid-terms, or further down the road in '08.

Blogs are less about authority and more about forum and participatory democracy. Sure the facts may sometimes be a little askew, but then again so are some of the major news outlets. The point here is that blogs allow citizens to have an additional voice in a democracy. By posting or leaving comments netizens further explore the core ideals of our society. The debate and exchange of ideas is what we need and the blog is one of the best ways to go about it.

-Dippold

Political Online Reputation