Back to the blog after presenting my paper with Amanda Ash in the wiki project at CBC Radio 3.
In a session at International Symposium on Online Journalism on blogs and UGC, Joshua A. Braun of Cornell University outlined how broadcasters in the US were adopting blogs.
This is an area close to my heart, as I have published research in how the BBC adopted blogging for accountability.
Braun look at the news divisions of the three major broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC,
In his presentation, he remarked how most broadcast blogs did little new. Some were used as venues for news video, or as ways of posting promotional material. But they were not used for transparency, to provide a more behind the scenes account.
He found that blogs were used as an easier way of pushing out news content, as I have in my research on the BBC.
One of the reasons for their adoption in US networks, Braun said, was that blogs were easy to deploy and update, compared to existing content management system used by a network.
US networks maintain authority through stage management, concluded Braun. But he added that there may be a role for what he called enclosure – maintaining control of professional spaces online.
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