The hegemonic blogosphere.

I attended the New Media vs. Traditional Journalism and Political New Media panels. It provided me more inspiration than I’ve managed to cling to in a while. Both sessions were thought provoking and brought me to an epiphany that could become into an in-depth research topic.

In the second session, Albert May, associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, discussed his book, Campaign 2008: It's On You Tube. The power of social networks (bloggers included) and video sharing became even clearer to me with examples from the 2008 election. Bloggers usually parrot the media and ride the waves of agendas put forth by traditional gatekeepers. However, within this complex network of contributors is a hegemony that set its own agendas and steers the collective voice. There’s an apparent hegemony in the blogosphere that obviously affects even the news agendas of traditional media outlets.

I’ve learned that bloggers carry a “gate watching” role, but I think there’s a rigid, and ever-undulating, structure that has perhaps not taken power away from traditional media outlets, but transferred some of the power from old, affluent, white gatekeepers to young, affluent, white gatekeepers. This theory is based on the anecdotes and statistics from the sessions and several Pew studies. For my thesis, I’d perhaps like to examine the gatekeeping process in the blogosphere. Additionally, I would like to examine the working of this blogosphere upper crust in relation to the lower class of bloggers.

It's amazing social structure that has the potential to make things happen.