Political and non-political bloggers in the 2004 United States presidential election: Motivations and activities

With the reported growth per day of 100,000 blog sites as of January 2006, web logs---frequent, reverse-order chronological online publications---have become an important communication medium to millions of Americans. During the 2004 presidential campaign, many interested citizens used blogs to express their ideas and opinions and share them with others.; This dissertation adds to the body of literature on the blogging phenomenon by examining the bloggers themselves. During the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, 290 bloggers participated in an online survey to answer questions about their blogging activities, the reasons why they keep a web log, their traditional and new media use, their political activities, and others. The content of the 78 political blog sites whose URL was provided in the survey was analyzed to further examine blogging activities.; The findings indicate that although bloggers in general are intense Internet users who actively seek to express themselves and share their ideas with others, differences exist between political and nonpolitical bloggers in many areas, including blog use, motivation of blogging, and the use of media.; A content analysis of political blog sites shows that bloggers and blog readers engaged in political discussion using this new form of communication technology, such as linking and comments. Bloggers frequently expressed their ideas and opinions about the presidential election and the war in Iraq, and blog readers responded to authors' perspectives in their comments sections. Although about half of the time blog readers expressed their agreement with the author's viewpoints, readers also often expressed disagreement with the author's points and introduced new perspectives. In particular, the analysis shows that the more frequently a blogger discusses national or international issues such as the election or the war in Iraq, the more likely readers of these entries were to dispute the blog author's viewpoints.