At the Belmont Club, a discussion on the architecture of the blogospere that should be required reading for anyone in media (including those involved in the communications machinery of government, military and political parties). It addresses what blogs are, how they function as a system…
Observers have long noticed that blog sites tended to fall into one of three categories: the Finders, Thinkers and Linkers, and these correspond to the structure of the blogosphere. Finders are sites dedicated to capturing direct experiences. Food bloggers, reporters embedded with military units, the journals of expeditions, institutions which monitor foreign language publications — the tourist who posts pictures of a tsunami which has just wrecked his hotel — are all examples of Finders. During the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, one Israeli schoolboy described how he sheltered from rockets in a bunker on his personal weblog. Others captured video of rockets striking their neighborhoods. These are all Finders. They perform one simple function: to lift an event above the Horizon and make it visible to the Internet for the first time. The importance of this act cannot be overstated. Glenn Reynolds, in a private conversation, referred to this original reportage, the discovery of the primary fact, as “the Killer App”.
Once an event has been blogged, however obscurely, it becomes potentially accessible to one of the countless eyes, both human and robotic, which pore over the Internet in search of facts to bolster or demolish an argument. Monitoring websites is a task made easier by the widespread adoption of a protocols like RSS which belong to class of formats which alert watchers to updated content, often with a summary of the content itself. Programs which continuously monitor a number of websites for content changes are called aggregators. Amateur and professional specialists use these and a variety of other tools to scour the web looking for new trends and facts to bolster their models. Some are industry analysts; others are academics; still others are open-source intelligence gatherers. Some are amateurs. Collectively they may be called the Thinkers. They are the people who find the stories in the raw data.
One classic example of a blogger acting as a Thinker was how Flopping Aces tracked down and finally debunked the existence of AP source “Captain Jamil Hussein”, who was widely quoted by the wire service as an expert on the atrocities in the Baghdad area. Using Internet search tools and email, Flopping Aces gathered enough detail to make him suspect that that “Captain Jamil Hussein” was an all too conveniently present and quotable to be plausible. Following his hunch, Flopping Aces soon discovered that American officials in Baghdad had never heard of this widely quoted AP source. He wrote up his findings and preciptated a storm. Eventually, Hussein’s existence was categorically denied by the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, leading to demands that the AP retract stories based upon the phantom Captain. To this day the Associated Press has not produced the person or even the photograph of their star source, and a search for him finally involving CNN has not turned him up either.
[…]
Now we come to the Linkers. Although Flopping Aces was a widely read blogsite, its traffic alone was incapable of generating the attention to necessary to challenge the mighty Associated Press. But the impact of the Flopping Aces analysis was soon magnified by the hierarchical structure of the blogosphere, a structure we glimpsed by running queries in Technorati. Following Flopping Ace’s trailblazing efforts, posts casting doubt on the existence of “Captain Jamil Hussein” began to appear at even larger sites like Instapundit and Michelle Malkin’s, sites which specialize in spotting trending stories and spreading them around. These bloggers are often called the Linkers. Blogsite after blogsite, following the lead of the Linkers, began to pile on to the case of “Captain Jamil Hussein”, and added their traffic to the growing chorus. Finally the signal jumped across the gap into the mainstream media and the political world. One blogger — one Thinker — had forced the mighty Associated Press to respond to the question of whether it was making its sources up.
The entire process can be summarized in the flowchart shown below. First a veritable army of collectors (the Finders) report events on their weblogs. This pushes events above the Horizon. These events in turn become visible to the Thinkers, who are often specialist analysts in particular beats. The Thinkers are often the first to detect a significant trend; trends that are sometimes ignored or overlooked by the mainstream media which is busy with its own editorial priorities. Sometimes the Thinkers find a glaring flaw in an existing news story which resets the narrative. In a variety of ways, the Thinkers weave facts into a story, and particularly striking memes are amplified by the Linkers until it engages the public consciousness.
…and where the future may lie. (A must read for newer bloggers as well.)
…one can only hope the blogs stay open and free in the coming years after seeing what China’s doing with Google and Microsoft.
I shuddered at how low a government can go when the Liberals/judge passed a ‘gag law’ regarding the AdScam mess and only way I got information was via blogs like Captain’s Quarters and here at SDA.
All it takes is some weak spined political party bending to pressure from “interest groups” and slap a gag order on ISP’s to shut things down.
Enjoy the freedom and preserve it from the trolls.
Thanks Kate, for a great blog and Happy New Year!
Interesting article, and a good example of why I don’t read American blogs much. Broadly speaking, they tend to interject wholly invalidated pro-war-in-Iraq nonsense within a somewhat-OK larger thesis. I find it difficult to buy what Belmont is selling when the pro-war-in-Iraq stooges have been measuarbly wrong for three years running now.
For example, I direct your attention to an interview with Janeane Garofalo on Fox News in February 2003, less than a month before the invasion began, and related comments from one blogger:
SNOW: Do you think [Saddam Hussein] is eager to obstain weapons of mass destruction?
GAROFALO: Yes, I think lots of people are eager to obtain weapons of mass destruction. But there’s no evidence that he has weapons of mass destruction. There’s been no evidence of him testing nuclear weapons. We have people that are in our face with nuclear weapons. We’ve got Iran and North Korea. We’ve got a problem with Pakistan… There’s a whole lot of people that are going nuclear. And I think that Saddam Hussein is actually, with the evidence, the least able to use nuclear weapons and the least obvious offender in that area at the moment… But I also resent Rick — you know, Senator Santorum’s assertions that this won’t be particularly costly or lengthy. This is going to be economically devastating for us. And also, the assertion that inaction breeds terrorist strikes, that is ridiculous. Action in Iraq will make us decidedly less safe.
**************
How is it that Janeane Garofalo had a better analysis of Iraq’s weapons program — and of the likelihood of a protracted occupation — than the combined forces of the White House, U.S. intelligence agencies, and leading U.S. news media?
“The blogosphere does not contain any preordained political or cultural bias. Structurally, however, it is extremely hostile to cant and disinformation. The political side which tells the most lies and falsehoods is likely to suffer more at its hands than one which hews more closely to the observable truth.”
Perhaps that’s why left/Liberal blogs in Canada at least, are not doing so well. Although self righteously ideological, they seem firm believers in ‘the end justifies the means.’ However ‘the means’ in their case all too often involves calumny, disinformation and outright lies. This form of deception and deflection is a direct carry over from the pre-blog monopoly days of the MSM/Liberal coalition that is obviously still practiced. Like these so-called ‘independent’ farmers popping up in defence of the CWB, for example.
Because Conservative blogs tend to depend on facts and rational thought they are getting a bigger audience and breaking more stories. LGF and Dan Rather, Flopping Aces and Captain Jamal Hussein, or the developing SDA and CWB are good examples.
However long it might take, the truth does seem to will out on the internet. With enough work deceivers can be smoked out of their holes and lies exposed (to the chagrin of the left).
…one does have to wonder if we had the Internet and blog’s back in the 60’s and 70’s how the world would have changed…like the nightly news from Vietnam, or Canada/Russia hockey game, or expose’ on the overspending by Montreal for Expo67 and the ’76-Olympics.
Heck, would the Liberals have lasted for 10 years?
My grandmother used to tell my mom, “the truth will always come out”. Glad right now it is via the blogsphere.
Geez, anybody who quotes Janeane Garofalo for reliable analysis on Iraq is a wack job. What next? A strategic analysis on Irans nuclear weapon building program by George Clooney and Alex Baldwin? Or, how about an in-depth analysis on climate change by Bugs Bunny?
Finders and thinkers and linkers, Oh my! (appologies to The Wizard of Oz) And then there is bob, who defies any type of catagory. Seems reading and reading comprehension are two different things.
This is an excellent paper that explains the blog phenomina and how it is changing the way information is disseminated to the public. The author also makes a valid point:
“The political side which tells the most lies and falsehoods is likely to suffer more at its hands than one which hews more closely to the observable truth.”
On that observation alone I believe that MSM outlets such as CBC, Tor Star and AP, will have to learn to put out more truth and less slant or risk being left by the wayside as irrelevant.
Boob,
How’s the weather in Pyongyang these days, aside from “glow-ball worming?”
You must be soooo ronery.
I hope Kate doesn’t mind and I apologize; I posted this at the Hugh Hewitt thread, but it seems more relevant here and I don’t know how to ‘delete’ from one and post to here, with a few extra comments.
“What the print-type proponents don’t understand about the internet and its blogs is that it operates in a completely different manner. It’s a different structure.
Print is linear; information moves one way, from the authoritative author to the non-expert reader, or, more accurately, readers (plural). That’s why you are reading it; an acknowledgment of your ignorance. This ignorance applies to both facts and analysis. Print sets up a hierachical structure of an individual author(ity) and a mass readership of non-authority. This linearity is valid for TV as well.
Knowledge, or the basic belief system in a MSM society, is meant to be accepted almost by faith. You believe in the validity and reliability of the authority. You ‘look up’ to them in this linear system.
The current MSM author(ities) are feeling ‘unworshipped’ as the internet information system takes over. Why?
The internet/blogs are non-linear. Information moves in every direction. There are no singular authorities. None. Instead, there are both authorities, of many disciplines and areas of expertise, as well as the uninformed and ignorant. They interact together. The ignorant are rapidly exposed, while in the linear MSM media, ignorance is not exposed because there is no feedback and because of the requirement for Faith.
The internet is not to be understood as ONE blog, or ONE information site or ONE author. The internet doesn’t operate within this singularity of voice. It operates as ALL blogs, information sites, authors. That’s its structure. A vast entwined network of data content and data analysis, constantly updated, constantly re-evaluated.
Knowledge is rapidly developed as these many voices interact, correct invalid data, update analysis, provide more comprehensive data and analysis. The linear MSM system cannot develop knowledge as rapidly, as expansively and with as much validity and reliability, as the internet system.
Again, the print/MSM system is focused around faith, around the expressions of Authorities. The internet system is focused around Information, which is rapidly developed, validated, analysed and constantly updated. Incredible.
The print/MSM system focuses around the existence of a few privileged Authorities (as individuals); the rest are the peasant mass who accept what you write/say.
The Internet system focuses around all who input, as Individuals, BUT, these individuals never operate alone, but within that collective Network of dynamic information generation.
Two different systems. No equivalence. For the sake of information development – which one is better, ie, provides more validity and reliability and more content? The Internet.
In the context of this thread, the Finders provide data – and this comes from many, many sources. The Thinkers analyse the data. Again, many sites will do this. The Linkers expand the spatial existence of this data/analysis. Put it all together and you’ve got quite the knowledge system. The Internet is one massive networked Dynamic Information/Knowledge System.
Interesting article, a printer friendly version would be handy.