Popular Blog Research Articles

Delivering the News with Blogs

ABSTRACT To deliver information about library news, services and resources to the science faculty and students at Georgia State University, several librarians developed a blog, Science News http://www.library. gsu.edu/news/science/. Despite the increasing popularity of blogs (or Weblogs), few libraries have taken advantage of what they offer. Blogs can be updated easily, frequently and continuously, making them an appealing alternative to static newsletters. This article summarizes the librarians' rationale for moving to this dynamic format, how the technology was balanced with the needs of the librarians and patrons, and the issues and challenges that are being addressed to ensure that this will be a viable and successful news-delivery system. Some preliminary user statistics have also been gathered and analyzed, offering encouragement that patrons are reading it. The experience with Science News is already serving as the model for the additional subject-specific blogs that have been developed to meet the informational needs of other patron groups.

The political j-blogger

This study explores how the increasingly popular blog format, as adopted by journalists affiliated with mainstream media outlets, affects long-standing journalistic norms and practice. It focuses on non-partisanship, transparency and the gatekeeping role, using a content analysis of 20 weblogs dealing with politics or civic affairs. Although expressions of opinion are common, most journalists are seeking to remain gatekeepers even in this highly interactive and participatory format. Political j-bloggers use links extensively - but mostly to other mainstream media sites. At least in their early use, journalists are ‘normalizing’ the blog as a component, and in some ways an enhancement, of traditional journalistic norms and practices.