INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, DIGITAL JOURNALISM,

AND THE STRUCTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF NEW MEDIA

GEORGE LZROIU
lazaroiu@addletonacademicpublishers.com
Advancement of Scholarly Research Center
AAP/CSA, New York

ABSTRACT. Driscoll et al. look at the relationship between feelings of fear

about terrorism and public attitudes toward restrictions on civil liberties and
the news media. Imfeld and Scott analyze newspaper online sites in an
attempt to gather baseline data to begin exploring the determinants of online
community building around the delivery of daily news. Meraz contends that
blogging has matured beyond public personal journaling to support citizen
journalism or journalism produced by independent bloggers unaffiliated with
professional newsrooms. Armstrong and McAdams maintain that the level
of credibility and trustworthiness of mass media is at a critical juncture.

1. Introduction
Driscoll et al. look at the relationship between feelings of
fear about terrorism and public attitudes toward restrictions on civil
liberties and the news media, explore the relationship between
feelings of fear about terrorism and news media use, and examine
whether self-reports estimating an affective state (fear of terrorism)
result in a perceptual bias similar to that of the so-called third-person
effect theory. Imfeld and Scott contend that newspapers need to
engage members of their community in a dialogue and provide
relevant news to readers. Newspapers today embed digital features
such as discussion boards into news sites to promote communal
online discourse. Meraz contends that blogging has matured beyond
public personal journaling to support citizen journalism or journalism produced by independent bloggers unaffiliated with professional newsrooms. The blog tool fosters decentralized citizen control
as opposed to hierarchical, elite control. Blogs are popularly viewed
as a form of social media. The blog form has matured to resemble
traditional journalism in form and practice. According to Armstrong
and McAdams, the level of credibility and trustworthiness of mass
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media is at a critical juncture. They examine three opinion-based

blogs as information sources and two data collections in an attempt
to isolate the credibility of male and female blog authors. Blogs are a
virtually untested medium. Gender may play a role in determining
source credibility ratings (in news stories, individuals trying to assess
credibility may look to the source for cues that serve as a heuristic
for information processing).

2. Perceptions of online news media

Driscoll et al. present descriptive data about online news
readers and their uses, and perceptions of online news media
coverage of the war on terrorism. An individuals level of fear may
be elevated by the highly arousing nature of news coverage about
terrorism. More frequent exposure to highly arousing news about
terrorism may trigger an availability heuristic. Exposure to terrorism
news may distort the risk interpretation process and intensify
feelings of fear.1 Salwen et al.s study draws on the third-person
effect hypothesis, which asserts that individuals judge the news
media to exert greater persuasive influence on other people than on
themselves. New media can affect how individuals acquire and
process the news. The World Wide Web offers the potential for users
to keep abreast of news at their convenience and to exercise more
control over the news stories they read. The third-person effect,
usually measured as cognitive effects of persuasive media influence,
manifests itself with affective media influence.2 Imfeld and Scott
look on online communities as gatherings of people who are united
by similar interests and willing to share in ongoing discussions.
Gatekeepers remain critical to the successful operation of online
interactivity related to the delivery of news. Interactivity is built of
pliable software programs and the time taken to add text and participate in discussions. Discussion boards offer newspapers opportunities to engage in two-way conversations with users.3
On Stones reading, virtual communities are passage points
for collections of common beliefs and practices that united people
who were physically separated.4 Tipson writes that more like a thin
but sticky acid, this cosmopolitan culture of networks and information media seems to overlay rather than supplant the cultures it
interacts with.5 Fallows claims that part of the presss job is to keep
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things in proportion: TVs natural tendency is to see things in shards.

It shows us one event with an air of utmost drama, then forgets
about it and shows us the next. Behind the term reporter is the
sense that the event matters most of all. Your role as a reporter is to
go out, look, learn and then report on what you have learned.6
3. Elite traditional media entities
Meraz examines the role of citizen and traditional media in
the setting of news agendas, and whether social influence theory
could predict agenda setting influences among and between these
two media players. Traditional medias agenda setting power is no
longer universal or singular within citizen media outlets. Independent blog networks are utilizing the blog tool to allow citizens more
influence and power in setting news agendas. Elite traditional mass
media entities are more likely to exert their agenda setting power at
the short head of the long tail of media choices. Elite traditional
media entities have hijacked the blog form. For traditional media
entities, agenda setting influence is filtered by the sociopolitical
boundaries of the press pass or knowledge of journalism norms and
traditions.
Declining newspaper circulation rates, eroding network
television audiences, and declining credibility of traditional media news outlets among Web users all suggest
that traditional media is in desperate need of reinvention.
It is questionable how long traditional media can erect
walled gardens in tools that build wealth through networked conversations and hyperlinked transparency.
The empowered Web audience, familiar with the participatory freedom of independent blogging, may find
little utility in a newsroom blog that ignores the wisdom
of the crowd.7

Stevens claims that so diverse are the definitions of information today, that it is impossible to reconcile them: there is little
consistency in the way in which the term information is used, resulting in an assumption, probably incorrect, that there is a broad
underlying definition of information that encompasses all uses of the
term in all fields that is commonly and directly understood.8 Wellman points out that too many scholars and pundits treat life online as
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an isolated social phenomenon. They usually ignore the fact that

people bring to their online interactions such baggage as their gender, stage in the life cycle, cultural milieu, socioeconomic status, and
off line connections with others.9 Wellman adds that community
ties are already geographically dispersed, sparsely knit, specialized
in content, and connected heavily by telecommunications (phone and
fax). Although virtual communities may carry these trends a bit
further, they also sustain in person encounters between community
members.10
4. Effects of blog usage
Armstrong and McAdams claim that when individuals are
using media, they actively select media appropriate to what they are
seeking. Effects of blog usage may not be parallel to that of other
media. The amount of experience with blogs can be expected to vary
widely in the population of U.S. Internet users. How a media consumer uses the medium appears to have a strong influence. The
motivations for exposure to blogs may prove more vital toward
understanding blog credibility. Perceived credibility of media has
been influenced by gender, the specific medium and expertise, along
with motivations for media use. The blog author is the source
within a blog. Armstrong and McAdams examine how the gender of
the writer of a blog post influenced the perceived credibility of the
blog post: information-seeking influences the perceived credibility of
the blog post, blog posts written by men were deemed more credible
than those written by women, and posts with male authors were rated
higher in credibility than posts with female authors. The writing style
and topic of the blog were also likely to influence the perceived
credibility of the post. Armstrong and McAdams reason that as blogs
evolve and become more common in the publics information diet,
gender cues may become less important to readers. As individuals
become more experienced at reading and gathering information from
blogs, they are not using traditional source descriptors to evaluate
information. Younger adults, who have grown up with social networking sites, e-mail, and mobile texting, recognize the tone and
voice of these less-professional communications as trustworthy.
Gender is a social construction that certainly appears in most media
and writing.11
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5. Conclusion
Driscoll says that perceptual biases should be evident when
asking about the fear effects of news media terrorism coverage.
News reports may either exacerbate fears of terrorism or people at
higher levels of fear seek out news more than others (online news
users may find online information more favorable than that found in
newspapers or on television newscasts). Imfeld and Scott analyze
newspaper online sites in an attempt to gather baseline data to begin
exploring the determinants of online community building around the
delivery of daily news. Meraz note that social network theory can be
used to explain the boundaries of potential source influence and the
potential power of agenda setters within specified social networks.
Networks like the independent blogosphere, relationships among
actors are expressed through the hyperlink. Elite traditional media
entities are using their blog to produce a more participatory form of
journalism. Armstrong and McAdams point out that readers may
gauge credibility and trust of information based on the individual
descriptors of sources within the text. The bloggers gender may be
irrelevant to blog readers who are accustomed to a particular genre
of blogs. The potential exists for gender cues to influence the
perceived credibility of blogs (individuals may perceive some topics
as belonging to female or male bloggers or as requiring a particular expertise).
REFERENCES
1. Driscoll, P.D. et al. (2005), Public Fear of Terrorism and the
News Media, in Salwen, M.B. et al. (eds.), Online News and the Public.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 165184.
2. Salwen, M.B. et al. (2005), Third-Person Perceptions of Fear
during the War on Terrorism: Perceptions of Online News Users, [1], 185
204.
3. Imfeld, C. and Scott, G.W. (2005), Under Construction: Measures of Community Building at Newspaper Web Sites, [1], 205220.
4. Cited in Jones, S. (1995), Understanding Community in the
Information Age, in Jones, S. (ed.), Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated
Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 19.
5. Tipson, F. (1999), Goods Move. People Move. Ideas Move.
And Culture Changes, National Geographic August: 12.

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6. Fallows, J. (1996), Breaking the News. New York: Pantheon,

5354.
7. Meraz, S. (2009), Is There an Elite Hold? Traditional Media to
Social Media Agenda Setting Influence in Blog Networks, Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication 14(3): 704.
8. Stevens, N. (1986), The History of Information, Advances in
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9. Wellman, B. (1997), The Road to Utopia and Dystopia on the
Information Highway, Contemporary Sociology 26(4): 446.
10. Wellman, B. (1997), An Electronic Group Is Virtually a Social
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11. Armstrong, C.L. and McAdams, M.J. (2009), Blogs of Information: How Gender Cues and Individual Motivations Influence Perceptions
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456.
George Lzroiu

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