[This posting also appears in my "
bamblog" and my "
social software class blog"]
Over the last weeks, a string of interrelated events has raised awareness of the german Blogosphere. This posting aims to (at least partially) recap these events and draw some tentative conclusions about the current state of the german Blogosphere in relation to other media.
In December 2004, Johnny Haeusler at "
Spreeblick" posted a well-written, quite critical
article on the business model of "Jamba" (a "2nd generation startup company" selling ring tones for mobile phones). The article attracted a lot of sympathetic comments and was heavily linked to over the next days. The attention grew even more when some Jamba employees posted rebuttals in the Spreeblick comment section, without laying open their affiliation to the company (however, they were not reacting as "official spokespersons" but rather on their own initiative, which is perfectly all right of course). This in turn caused even more comments and postings by other bloggers, including some of the German "A-List" like
"Markus Breuer ("Notizen aus der Provinz"),
"Martin Roell", and
"Industrial Technology & Witchcraft". Klaus Eck of the "PR Blogger" even ran a series of articles and interviews (
overview).
At that time (before christmas), the "jamba issue" was mostly confined to the Blogosphere (apart from a short text in
"werben & verkaufen"); nevertheless, it raised some interesting questions about issue management and the role of weblogs for corporate communications. Tilo Bonow, "Manager Corporate Communications" at Jamba conceded (in an
interview to the "PR Blogger") that they concentrated their online monitoring on discussion fora, but will install an additional monitoring system with about 40.000 Blogs. Since Weblogs can contribute a lot to the Google Pagerank (thus increasing the online visibility) of a particular name or combination of search strings they are an important factor for communication strategies, and watching developments in this area is definitely a good idea for any organization concerned with their reputation.
In January, the discussion about the role of Weblogs in online communication gained new momentum when Spiegel Online (SPON) published two articles;
one (by Christian Stöcker) on the issue of "Jamba vs. Blogs" [
disclosure 1] and the
other (50 cent fee charged) by Julia Bonstein und Thomas Schulz on Weblogs in general. Christian Stöcker cited me as an communication scientist stating that the german blogosphere has reached a critical mass and is able to set issues on the agenda of "mainstream media" (SPON itself being one, of course...).
Again, a lot of Weblogs linked to these stories (e.g.
PR Blogger,
Spindoktor,
IT&W), both discussing the implications for Jamba (since SPON is the mostly read german online publication, the story gained by far more attention than the distributed conversations in the blogosphere) and expressing satisfaction over the fact that Blogs made it to SPON (because this will bring attention and visibility to Blogging as a relatively new but diverse practice of self-publishing on the Internet). In general, bloggers regarded the SPON articles as objective and well-written (the Bonstein/Schulz-article was critized by some for its conjunction of Weblogs=Online Journals, though).
A few days later, the TV magazine "Planetopia" (SAT1) featured a piece on Weblogs - and this time the reaction in the blogosphere was mostly critical: The report apparently (I haven't watched it, only saw some snippets available
here) used rather sensational images and sounds and conveyed a general impression that Weblogs were partly obscure online diaries, partly dangerous publications whose authors "play journalism" without adhering to journalistic standards like checking their sources, etc.. They interviewed
Johnny Haeusler,
Jörg Kantel of "Schockwellenreiter" and
"girl from mars" who all later complained that their statements were taken out of context or placed in misleading contexts.
Prof. Neuberger (Muenster University) commented from an academic perspective, emphasizing the different filtering mechanisms of traditional mass media journalism (information gets filtered by the journalist / the editorial board) vs. Weblogs (information gets filtered by the network of interconnected weblogs). [
disclosure 2]
The blogosphere reactions on the feature range(d) from outrage over the poor journalistic efforts (see
here or
Jörg Kantel's post) over
ironic/
"what did you expect?" remarks to statements actually predicting positive net results for the diffusion of weblogs (
Markus Breuer,
PR Blogger), since "any publicity is good publicity" (by the way, do they think that at Jamba, too?). By now (Jan 20th), the story is far from over: Austrian radio station
FM4 will air a feature on "Jamba vs. Bloggers" later tonight [Update Jan 28th: You can listen to the feature
here], and german weekly magazine Focus has contacted my for some information on Weblogs.
What can we learn from the events of the last weeks about the state of the german Blogosphere, and what developments are to be expected?
First of all, as the Jamba case has shown, Weblogs will increasingly find their place in the communication strategies of organizations. Some of them might use Weblogs as an additional channel for their internal and/or external communication, while others will monitor Blogs for mentions of their products or practices. In either case, organizations have to understand that Weblogs differ from other online media in the way they structure attention and discussions: Their highly networked nature helps disseminating ideas and "memes" relatively fast, thus giving them a high visibility within the growing audience of online users reading weblogs.
While a lot of the discussion is highly self-referential (Blogs commenting on other Blogs' comments on something written in another Blog) and contributing to an "echo chamber effect", it is short-sighted to dismiss Blogs on this ground as irrelevant. Due to processes of intra-media agenda setting, Weblogs and other mass media will get increasingly connected: While Blogs have always relied on other media (not only the Internet, but TV and Press as well) for some of their topics, by now the information flows go the other way, too. Although there are no exact figures, a lot of journalists probably already monitor Weblogs, and a growing number of them uses Blogs as an alternative way of publishing information - not replacing but complementing traditional modes of delivering content to the audience.
If we take a look at the US, we see that even back in 2002
Weblogs played a pivotal role in forcing a high-ranked politician to resign due to racist remarks. They gained even more significance during last year's presidential campaign, where they not only helped exposing CBS's use of forged documents (the events are now also known as
Rathergate), but served as an important tool for organizing and mobilizing people for political action.
So the important issue is not to argue whether Weblogs will replace journalism (they will not) or somewhat derogatively compare them to "mere online diaries" (some are, but a lot of important weblogs are not), but rather to look at the different ways in which this new online genre institutionalizes. In other words: Exactly because blogging is not journalism, not private online-exhibitionism and not dysfunctional flaming of other peoples comments, understanding the dynamics of the blogosphere becomes a central task for communication practitioners and researchers alike.
[
disclosure 1]
The SPON-article on the Jamba case by Christian Stöcker was probably caused by me, since I told him about the Jamba story when we met in Hamburg on december 29th and he decided to cover it for Spiegel Online. So in a way, my statement that Blogs now reach out to "traditional mass media" partly was a self-fulfilling prophesy, partly had a kind of "heisenberg effect" where the observer has an influence on the field studied.
[
disclosure 2]
Probably due to my comments in the Spiegel Online-article, "Planetopia" tried to reach me for comments on the 7th of January, but since I'm living in Vienna at the moment, I was not available for an interview and they eventually contacted Prof. Neuberger. I guess I would have talked to them, but am somewhat grateful now that I didn't...
