Filter Blogs vs. Personal Journals: Understanding the Knowledge Production Gap on the Internet

Abstract

Blog is currently a popular form of knowledge production on the Internet. Research shows that relatively few bloggers produce ''filter blogs,'' which focus on political knowledge. Most bloggers produce personal journals. This study uses national survey data to determine whether and why people have differential knowledge production in the form of different blogs. As knowledge is a critical indicator of social power, this research also examines whether blogs with different levels of political knowledge demonstrate unequal social power. Results show that bloggers with higher socioeconomic status contribute more filter blogs than lower-status segments. Even among filter bloggers, socioeconomic status, gender, and print-media use are associated with social influence. These findings suggest that a knowledge production gap merits more scholarly attention.Key words: Knowledge gap, Knowledge possession, Knowledge production, Filter blogs, Personal journals, Social power, Internet doi:10.1111/j. 1083-6101.2009.01452.x On September 8, 2004, only weeks before the U.S. presidential election, the CBS television network's 60 Minutes II aired a story regarding President George W. Bush's fulfillment of service obligations in the Texas Air National Guard. Some damaging memos written by Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, Bush's Guard supervisor, were exhibited in the report. The memos asserted that Bush received preferential treatment when he abruptly gave up flying and moved from Texas to Alabama to take part in a political campaign.Nineteen minutes into the CBS report, the authenticity of the memos was challenged by an active Air Force officer on a discussion forum at the conservative website FreeRepublic.com. About 4 hours later, postings from ''Buckhead,'' a Republican lawyer in Atlanta claimed that the typography of the memos was inconsistent with period typewriters (Pein, 2005;Scott, 2007). The buzz quickly made its way to other blogs such as Rathergate.com, Littlegreenfootballs.com, AndrewSullivan.com, InstaPundit.com, and DrudgeReport.com. Within 24 hours after the story aired, the authenticity issue brought about by bloggers resulted in having the story effectively retracted by mainstream media across the nation. Then, on September 15, CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged that there were serious questions about the authenticity of the documents. Two months later, this legendary anchor announced his resignation, after serving CBS for nearly 4 decades, in what has become known as ''Memogate. '' Memogate is just one of the examples illustrating the power of bloggers to produce their own knowledge, to mobilize citizens behind a cause, and to bring about social and political change (Kaye, 2007). As 8% of internet users in the US, or about 12 million Americans, keep a blog, and 39%, or 57 million Americans, read blogs (Pew, 2006), the role of bloggers as knowledge producers deserves more scholarly scrutiny. Nevertheless, past research primarily focused on the possession of knowledge as most knowledge gap research does. Little atten...

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