AoIR Abstract

Author(s): Heather Gorgura

Title: "The War on the Terror Consensus: Anti-War Blogs as an Online Sphere of Dissensus "

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Blog journalism is emerging as a new site of networked dissensus online. In this paper I use the niche sphere of anti-war blogs as a case study to explore how blog journalism challenges the news frames of the mainstream media by appropriating the content of traditional news outlets and bringing it into the realm of open publishing. Using a multi-method approach incorporating discourse analysis and an hybrid form of network analysis, I examine how anti-war blogs converge around key War on Terror frames, created by the Bush Administration and reified in the mainstream media, to forge an online sphere of dissensus. Blogs, an innovation of the open publishing movement, have been recognized as an emerging form of journalism and editorializing which provides a counterpoint to mainstream news. However, little has been done to examine the nature of the online interaction between blogs and the traditional news artifacts to which they link. This linking behavior privileges off-site content, creating a dialogic text between the blogger, the author of the borrowed text, and readers who comment on posts. These practices draw mainstream news content, created as one-way mass communication, into the realm of many-to-many media. This intersection between blogs and the online content produced by mainstream news outlets is a significant one. By drawing the mainstream news artifact into a network of dialogic texts, bloggers erode the authoritative vantage point of the original text and complicate its univocal voice. Hence, what was created by the corporate news outlet as text to be consumed by readers instead becomes part of a complex dialogue (Jackson 1997). It is not only their departure from the structure of mainstream news artifacts which make blogs a site of dissensus. Liberated from the cultural and institutional constraints of the corporate newsroom, blogger journalists are freed, to varying degrees, from many of the pressures suggested by the indexing hypothesis (Bennett 1990) and hegemony theory (Hallin 1987). In consequence, “amateur” blogger journalists are less likely than their “professional” counterparts to adhere to the news frames (Entman 1991) of the Administration—the primary source upon which the mainstream media tend to rely. Using anti-war blogs as a case study of a sphere of dissensus, I conduct a hybrid textual/hyperlink network analysis to map the patterns of blog convergence around key War on Terror frames. Because the post-9/11 environment has been hostile to dissenting points of view, the range of elite debate around the War on Terror has been tightly constrained, leading in turn to a similarly limited range of debate in the mainstream media. Elite and mainstream media discourse around the War on Terror therefore offers a case study of consensus. Anti-war blogs provide a complementary object of study. Because blogs created specifically to critique domestic and foreign policies related to the War on Terror position themselves in opposition to the stance of the Administration, they offer a case study of dissensus. Hyperlink network analysis, as I am using it for the purposes of this study, diverges from past applications of this method in two key ways. First, this is an analysis of discourse construction, not of social networking as it has traditionally been adapted to analysis of online networks (Kling, 2000). I am not looking at actors and nodes, but constructions of texts. Second, I make no claims that hyperlinking is an expression of affinity. On the contrary, in this case linking is expected to be used as a tool for bringing the opponent’s discourse into the blogosphere for the purposes of making a rebuttal. This kind of analysis is more along the lines of the debate-scaping technique suggested by Rogers and Marres (2000). Still, it acknowledges a key tenet of more classic studies of online network analysis, that “the presence of a link reflects a communicative choice made by the designer” and “enables the designer to control the potential ways a user can move through information” (Jackson 1997). This study has important theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically it elaborates on and offers new directions of network analysis. Further, as many people seek alternatives for production and consumption of news in light of ongoing consolidation of corporate media, this study will indicate some of the strengths and weaknesses of the weblog as a new form of journalism and a new forum for dissent. References Bennett, L. (1990). Toward a theory of press-state relations in the United States.” Journal of Communication, 40, 103-125. Entman, R. E. (1991). Framing U. S. coverage of international news: Contrasts in narratives of the KAL and Iran air incidents. Journal of Communication, 41, 6-27. Hallin, D. C. (1987). Hegemony: The American news media from Vietnam to El Salvador, a study of ideological change and its limits. In D. Paletz (Ed.) Political communication research, (pp. 3-25). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Jackson, M. (1997). Assessing the structure of the communication on the World Wide Web. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue1/jackson.html Kling, R. (2000). Learning about information technologies and social change: The contribution of social informatics. The Information Society, 16(3), 217-232. Rogers, R. and Marres, N. (2000). Landscaping climate change: a mapping technique for understanding science & technology debates on the World Wide Web. Public Understanding of Science, 9, 141-163.

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AoIR 5.0

	*Author(s):* Heather Gorgura
	*Title:* "The War on the Terror Consensus: Anti-War Blogs as an Online Sphere of Dissensus "

***	Blog journalism is emerging as a new site of networked dissensus online. In this paper I use the niche sphere of anti-war blogs as a case study to explore how blog journalism challenges the news frames of the mainstream media by appropriating the content of traditional news outlets and bringing it into the realm of open publishing. Using a multi-method approach incorporating discourse analysis and an hybrid form of network analysis, I examine how anti-war blogs converge around key War on Terror frames, created by the Bush Administration and reified in the mainstream media, to forge an online sphere of dissensus. Blogs, an innovation of the open publishing movement, have been recognized as an emerging form of journalism and editorializing which provides a counterpoint to mainstream news. However, little has been done to examine the nature of the online interaction between blogs and the traditional news artifacts to which they link. This linking behavior privileges off-site content, creating a dialogic text between the blogger, the author of the borrowed text, and readers who comment on posts. These practices draw mainstream news content, created as one-way mass communication, into the realm of many-to-many media. This intersection between blogs and the online content produced by mainstream news outlets is a significant one. By drawing the mainstream news artifact into a network of dialogic texts, bloggers erode the authoritative vantage point of the original text and complicate its univocal voice. Hence, what was created by the corporate news outlet as text to be consumed by readers instead becomes part of a complex dialogue (Jackson 1997). It is not only their departure from the structure of mainstream news artifacts which make blogs a site of dissensus. Liberated from the cultural and institutional constraints of the corporate newsroom, blogger journalists are freed, to varying degrees, from many of the pressures suggested by the indexing hypothesis (Bennett 1990) and hegemony theory (Hallin 1987). In consequence, “amateur” blogger journalists are less likely than their “professional” counterparts to adhere to the news frames (Entman 1991) of the Administration—the primary source upon which the mainstream media tend to rely. Using anti-war blogs as a case study of a sphere of dissensus, I conduct a hybrid textual/hyperlink network analysis to map the patterns of blog convergence around key War on Terror frames. Because the post-9/11 environment has been hostile to dissenting points of view, the range of elite debate around the War on Terror has been tightly constrained, leading in turn to a similarly limited range of debate in the mainstream media. Elite and mainstream media discourse around the War on Terror therefore offers a case study of consensus. Anti-war blogs provide a complementary object of study. Because blogs created specifically to critique domestic and foreign policies related to the War on Terror position themselves in opposition to the stance of the Administration, they offer a case study of dissensus. Hyperlink network analysis, as I am using it for the purposes of this study, diverges from past applications of this method in two key ways. First, this is an analysis of discourse construction, not of social networking as it has traditionally been adapted to analysis of online networks (Kling, 2000). I am not looking at actors and nodes, but constructions of texts. Second, I make no claims that hyperlinking is an expression of affinity. On the contrary, in this case linking is expected to be used as a tool for bringing the opponent’s discourse into the blogosphere for the purposes of making a rebuttal. This kind of analysis is more along the lines of the debate-scaping technique suggested by Rogers and Marres (2000). Still, it acknowledges a key tenet of more classic studies of online network analysis, that “the presence of a link reflects a communicative choice made by the designer” and “enables the designer to control the potential ways a user can move through information” (Jackson 1997). This study has important theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically it elaborates on and offers new directions of network analysis. Further, as many people seek alternatives for production and consumption of news in light of ongoing consolidation of corporate media, this study will indicate some of the strengths and weaknesses of the weblog as a new form of journalism and a new forum for dissent. References Bennett, L. (1990). Toward a theory of press-state relations in the United States.” Journal of Communication, 40, 103-125. Entman, R. E. (1991). Framing U. S. coverage of international news: Contrasts in narratives of the KAL and Iran air incidents. Journal of Communication, 41, 6-27. Hallin, D. C. (1987). Hegemony: The American news media from Vietnam to El Salvador, a study of ideological change and its limits. In D. Paletz (Ed.) Political communication research, (pp. 3-25). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Jackson, M. (1997). Assessing the structure of the communication on the World Wide Web. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue1/jackson.html Kling, R. (2000). Learning about information technologies and social change: The contribution of social informatics. The Information Society, 16(3), 217-232. Rogers, R. and Marres, N. (2000). Landscaping climate change: a mapping technique for understanding science & technology debates on the World Wide Web. Public Understanding of Science, 9, 141-163.