There is widespread disagreement about the extent to which discussions in online spaces such as blogs (sometimes referred to as ‘weblogs’) can reinvigorate the public sphere – pessimists regard them as online lynch mobs and optimists believe they could become Habermasian digital cafés. In this debate, the blogs are often assumed to be independent blogs, whereas mainstream media blogs have received much less attention. This is surprising, given the centrality of journalists to political communication and the fact that blogs are now an integral feature of mainstream news sites. These draw readership numbers unparalleled by citizen-bloggers or alternative news sites. Even though scholars have begun to investigate the interactive opportunities provided by newspaper websites and the deliberative potential of online discussion, the focus has been on comments on articles, the most popular form of user-generated content (UGC). These are typically moderated by in-house teams, or even outsourced, and quite a different space to blogs. The question that seems to have been considered less often – which this thesis addresses – is the value of journalist-blogs and the extent to which they facilitate deliberative dialogue.
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Submitted in the fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, 2013
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