One Thing Missing

Lately, I've seen a lot of people commenting on the blogosphere as a replacement for mainstream media. This is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far.

The media as a whole serves several discrete functions:

• information gathering
• information filtering
• analysis
• opinion molding
• opinion modeling
• entertainment

There are other functions the media provides, but these are the most critical.

Information Gathering and Information Filtering

Information gathering is the process of actually finding information, while information filtering is the process of determining which bits of information that you have collected are meaningful, rather than trivial. Information is all around us, but most of it is not meaningful except in very specific contexts. For example, if a city council passes a resolution against US involvement in Upper Slobonia, that is certainly information. However, it's meaningless in and of itself (though it may be meaningful if virtually every city council in the country does so, as it would be an indicator of public opinion).

The major media actually does not do a great job at these functions, mostly due to laziness as far as I can tell. For example, no one saw the Savings and Loan crisis coming. Why not? Because the reporters who could have gathered the information in the records offices of the SEC were too busy attending press conferences and parties and listening to what was being talked about to actually go dig up the information. What information did come to light tended to get filtered out as isolated failures or financial difficulties, because there were not enough data points being gathered until the crisis was already upon us.

That said, the major media do a far better job, at present, of information gathering than the blogosphere. There is no blog equivalent to the AP or the staff of the NY Times. Blogs excel at finding information in print - especially information published on the Internet, filtering it and disseminating it (see especially Instapundit), but the gathering of raw information is still all too rare.

Analysis, Opinion Molding and Opinion Modeling

Analysis is the process of taking filtered information and placing it in a broader context. Opinion molding is the process of forming the opinions of others; editorializing is a subset of this process. Opinion modeling is the process of showing how a particular opinion fits into a broad philosophy.

This is the strong-point of the blogosphere. Blogs are often amazingly good at analysis. For examples, see USS Clueless and Belmont Club. By contrast, this is the weakest point of major media, frequently caught completely unaware by events either because their bad filtering prohibited good analysis, or unacknowledged biases led to faulty analysis.

Blogs are less efficient at opinion molding than the major media, primarily because while blogs - a mostly written medium - can convey logical arguments with great skill and effect, they are seldom able to obtain the emotional impact of and image and an anecdote. For example, I recently saw a CNN report with an Iraqi mother crying over her dead baby, killed in a cross-fire between US soldiers and Ba'athist insurgents. It takes a long time for any but the most hard-hearted to get past that image to the logical argument that she shouldn't have been holding her baby deliberately between US troops and Ba'athists firing on them, in order to make it harder for US troops to effectively fight the Ba'athists (especially because CNN didn't actually mention that she was doing so).

Opinion modeling is something else blogs do very well. Blogs generally are explicit about their philosophy, while major media tend to deny that they have a philosophy. Still, it is no accident that sources like the BBC or Reuters make their bias apparent; they have an editorial philosophy and it infuses everything they do. They do tend to deny that they have such a philosophy, though. Good blogosphere examples of this are Daily Kos and Eject!Eject!Eject!

Entertainment

This is a toss-up. The major media are very good at entertaining - they see it as a part of their mission and frequently skip every other aspect of reporting to be entertaining - regardless of cost to truth or anything else.

On the other hand, blogs are very entertaining for people who enjoy reading - especially politically-active people in the context of blogs which replace news media - but not as good at reaching people seeking mass-market entertainment.

I think that the blogosphere could eventually be a valuable channel for news and a significant competitor to major media, if a few steps are taken:

• There needs to be some equivalent of the wire service, which feeds raw information into the blogosphere for digestion. Due to the bias in news gathering, filtering and presentation, the existing wire services are inadequate to the task.
• There needs to be blogging software which includes information management as well as content management, or an easy way to link content management and information management software together, in order to uncover unsuspected links when filtering information.
• There needs to be some extension of blogs into short video presentations and photographic presentation.

The one essential change is the need for some form of information gathering. I don't know how this would arise, except as an emergent property of individual blogging preferences. It's certainly possible that blogs would largely supplant major media in some ways, but if so, it's some ways off.

Posted by Jeff at May 26, 2004 09:02 PM | Link Cosmos