American Behavioral Scientist

 

Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Free Access - Register Here

Click here for free access to the SAGE eReference platform!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (1)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by MacDougall, R.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 49, No. 4, 575-599 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764205280922

Identity, Electronic Ethos, and Blogs

A Technologic Analysis of Symbolic Exchange on the New News Medium

Robert MacDougall

Emerson College

News blogs (Web logs dedicated to the dissemination of news) are becoming the default political news source for a growing number of well-educated and apparently well-informed segments of the population. Bloggers and blog advocates suggest that blogs, online lists, and their various analogs offer something different and potentially unique to the 21st-century citizen. At their best, blogs represent a new form of open-sourced/open-access partisan press that promises to bring McLuhan’s tribal context one step closer to fulfillment. At their worst, blogs represent the latest form of mass-mediated triviality and celebrity spectacle, with the potential to create and sustain insulated enclaves of intolerance predicated on little more than personal illusion, rumor, and politically motivated innuendo. Employing first a medium theoretic and then a symbolic interactionist lens, the present study considers some of the key structural features of news blogs and discusses some of the personal, social, and political significances of blogs and blogging.

Key Words: blogs • news • ethos • identity • politics


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Qualitative ResearchHome page
N. Hookway
`Entering the blogosphere': some strategies for using blogs in social research
Qualitative Research, February 1, 2008; 8(1): 91 - 113.
[Abstract] [PDF]