ABSTRACT
During the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, blogs arrived as a political communications medium. Tales of intrepid citizen journalists scooping and fact-checking the corrupt mainstream media (MSM) became conventional wisdom through a series of events, culminating in the Memogate controversy. A content analysis of four leading political blogs during the final 14 weeks of the campaign, however, challenges this narrative as more exception than common practice. While the blogs studied were found to perform traditional news functions, key aspects of blogging mythology and rhetoric, such as original reporting, circumvention of mainstream media, alternativesources and—perhaps most significant in terms of political communications and democracy, suggesting action in response to news and information—were surprisingly rare. Rather than vigilante muckrakers, bloggers were activist media pundits, raising questions about their true role in political communication.
