University of Leicester
Browse
AslibProceedings_MTouriFinal.pdf (77.84 kB)

News blogs: strengthening democracy through conflict prevention

Download (77.84 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2010-06-18, 11:43 authored by Maria Touri
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer greater insight in the role of blogs in the creation of a more transparent news media system and a more democratic political reality. Design/methodology/approach – Framing theory is employed as a conceptual tool to re-interpret existing evidence of the performance of news blogs during situations of political conflict and war. A theoretical analysis is developed setting out the premises of the challenge that blogs can pose to the framing of conflict by mainstream media. The analysis incorporates empirical examples of reporting conflict and war in the blogosphere. Finally, with the aid of international relations theories, the role of blogs is evaluated in terms of the political transparency and accountability they could offer during conflict and war. Findings – The analysis demonstrated that by promoting alternative and progressive voices, blogs have the capacity to shift the power over framing away from the usual sources in the news reporting of political conflict and turn the media system into a greater constraining factor for governments than even before. Originality/value – The paper presents a novel approach to the interaction between blogs and mainstream media by combining theories from the disciplines of communications and international relations. The analysis generated a hypothesis that can be empirically assessed with the investigation of the framing output of influential news blogs and mainstream news media during political conflict and war.

History

Citation

Aslib Proceedings, 2009, 61 (2), pp. 170-184

Published in

Aslib Proceedings

Publisher

Emerald

issn

0001-253X

Copyright date

2009

Available date

2010-06-18

Publisher version

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/00012530910946910

Language

en

Usage metrics

    University of Leicester Publications

    Categories

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC