Annotated Bibliography

The audience I intend on writing this research paper for are the people that do not look at blogs as a legitimate source of information, or in other words, people that look at blogs as mere trash and opinions that cannot be taken seriously.  My research for this topic began with the Library Catalog, and spread onto the Internet once I attained a legitimate train of thought.  In the Library Catalog I searched for blogs, and from the list of books it gave me I found all of the ones that had anything to do with blogs, new media, and politics.  From these books I want to learn how blogs are organized, what kind of impact they have on politics, tendencies that can be seen in the blogging world, whether or not blogs are considered to be legitimate and if so why, and to also analyze the impact blogs are having on the news media.  On the internet (through google) I started off searching for information on blogs and politics, which lead me to search for news stories first broken by blogs, which then lead me to research blogs as a source of journalism.  Through this constant act of searching, I have been able to develop a rough thesis:  Blogs are an important intervening variable in politics that help to legitimize the political/democratic process through reliable investigative journalism.

Sources

Haskins, Walaika.  "Bloggers Greatest Hits."  TechNewsWorld.  27 June 2007.  25 October 2008.  <http://www.technewsworld.com/story/58038.html>

This article provides me with perhaps the most important information or argument I can make about the legitimacy of blogs as a source of investigative journalism.  The article ranks the top ten news stories ever to be broken by blogs, and then gives a description of each story.  In order to relate this information to my paper, I will take only the stories that relate to politics, but luckily for me five of the ten do.  Also, by knowing the outline of the story it will be easy to research each story separately for more information if need be.

Petersen, Scott.  "Throw Another Blog on the Fire."  eWeek.  31 May 2004.  25 October 2008.  <http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Throw-Another-Blog-on-the-Fire/>

This article does a good job of describing blogs as a source of journalism.  In order to prove my thesis, I will need to be able to discuss how blogs have developed into reliable sources of journalism, something this article works to do.  It does a good job of discussing how many reporters and journalists for reliable newspapers etc. have actually developed their own blogs, and use those as a way to further elaborate on the articles and stories they broke for their employer.  The article also discusses the depth in which blogs are able to discuss stories just simply based on the number of blogs and bloggers there are.

http://technorati.com/politics/ and http://technorati.com

I know that this is not MLA format, but just hear me out on what I plan to do.  Technocrati is a reliable blog that can almost be described as a news source because it provides readers with information on all the top stories concerning the political arena, just like newspapers do.  So my plan is to one-day look at a newspaper, lets say the New York Times, and compare the information/stories being provided to readers.  Are they very similar or are they very different?  Also, Technocrati demonstrates how blogs can be ranked in terms of legitimacy; a topic I will need to discuss if I want to prove that blogs can be legitimate.

Drezner, Daniel and Farrell, Henry.  "The Power and Politics of Blogs."  University of Toronto Scarborough.  July 2004.  25 October 2008.  <http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~farrell/blogpaperfinal.pdf>

One of the reasons this source grabbed my attention is because it is written by assistant professors of political science from the Universtiy of Chicago and George Washington University; two very prestigious and trustworthy universities.  Also, the two assistant professors conducted a scientific experiment to analyze the ties between blogs and media outlets, so this will provide me with actual evidence about the usage of blogs as a source of news/journalism.  This paper also provides an immense amount of information on the history of blogs and the networked structure of the blogosphere, information that will certainly come in handy when writing a paper on blogs.

Sunstein, Cass.  Republic.Com.  Princeton, New Jersey.  Princeton University Press.  2001.

This book will be an excellent source of information because it does a great job of discussing how people interact on the Internet; meaning that he talks about what kind of tendencies people have when they write on things like blogs.  These tendencies will help me make accusations about blogs and how they are "formed."  For example, he talks about how people naturally group together with like minded people, meaning that blogs will have a common theme, meaning that information will be easy to find and access.

The Reference Shelf New Media.  Rolls, Albert.  Volume 78 Number 2.  The H.W Wilson Company.  2006.  Pg. 68-70.  Korzi, Michael.  "The Benefits of Blogs."  The Baltimore Sun.  13 March 2005.

This source does not provide me with one idea, but instead provides me with several.  The article discusses several things that will be necessary in proving my thesis:  the credibility of blogs, whether or not facts are checked on blogs, how blogs are being as sources of journalism, and how blogs are having an impact on the political atmosphere.  Perhaps the most important information this article provides me with has to do with fact checking on blogs.  Being able to discuss how credible people and sources check facts on blogs, instantly gives blogs a new sense of credibility.