Geoff Elliott (Washington correspondent)'s article in The Australian media supplement (31 July 2008, pp.31 and 35 - click on the title and you'll navigate there) is a topical introduction for me to the idea of blogging as a means to both report and affect events.
Elliott states that the abundance of US blogs and how they are 'influencing the narrative' should be taken into account by politicians, citing an example where he critiqued a statement made by former US Democrat hopeful Harold Ford (that Australia 'wanted to pursue nuclear weapons'). This was picked up by several US blogs, leading to much discussion (and derision for Ford).
A piece on Barack Obama written by Elliott was picked up by blog site 'The Drudge Report':
http://www.drudgereport.com/
Inside of an hour Elliott had been contacted, and within a day he was appearing on US national public and Fox radio stations in hour-long discussions on Obama. Mainstream media picked up his article as did several blog sites.
The most fascinating insight for me in all this was that several Americans stated that they went to foreign websites for their US political news. The immediate thought occurs that perhaps foreign press may be seen as more impartial, however I wouldn't see Australians doing the same thing for our political news!
Week 13
16 years ago
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