The e-Rise and Fall of Social Problems: The Blogosphere as a Public Arena

Abstract

Social problems theory has yet to fully address the impact that new communication technologies are having on the claims-making process. This article examines the emergence of the blogosphere as a cultural phenomenon that provides claims-makers with a powerful new public arena to advance social problem claims. Using Stephen Hilgartner and Charles Bosk’s (1988) public arenas model of social problem construction, blog-generated problem claims are examined to analyze how Internet driven social problems compete for public attention. Findings suggest that blogs make the claims-making process more efficient, offer expanded carrying capacity compared to traditional arenas, and provide outsider claims-makers with greater opportunity to have a voice in social problems construction. Still, only a small number of blogs have become recognized as claims-making arenas; they still rely on traditional principles of selection; and bloggers face the same competition for mainstream media attention as claims-makers using traditional arenas. Keywords: blog, blogosphere, Internet, new media, public arena. Mainstream news media maintain a gatekeeping function that serves to control the flow of information to audiences. Some claims find it harder to gain media access or to receive coverage (Jacobs 2000). In recent years, proponents of the Internet have proclaimed that new media technology will lead to a democratization of mass media (Rodman 2003). Since the deregulation of the Internet in 1995, users have quickly adapted to and become engaged in an online environment that can transmit large volumes of information in real time for relatively low cost (Plant 2004). The expansion of mass media into cyberspace has already created countless new sources for news: Web sites presented by the mainstream press and sites unique to the Internet, including search engines, message boards, and blogs, may have the potential to diffuse the gatekeeping function of traditional media, thereby altering their agenda-setting function (Williams and Delli Carpini 2004). In particular, the emergence of the blogosphere as an Internet-based claims-making arena may profoundly affect the process of social problems construction. This article expands Stephen Hilgartner and Charles L. Bosk’s (1988) public arenas model of social problems construction by exploring how the blogosphere increases the overall carrying capacity for problem claims, expands the opportunities for outsider claims-makers to promote social problems, and provides new avenues through which insider and secondary claims can be disseminated. Analysis of social problems constructed, in part, through claims made by bloggers also serves to verify the findings of Sheldon Ungar (1992) and Jerry Williams and R. S. Frey (1997) that dramatic real world events serve as focal issues that enhance audience receptiveness of problem claims. 1 Still, while blogs provide novel arenas where problem