BLOGWARS IS OUT!!!

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
This blog was started when I began writing a book about political blogs: BLOGWARS: THE NEW AMERICAN POLITICAL BATTLEGROUND. Now, finally, the book is out from Oxford University Press. More about the book on OUP's site. Some early publicity: --Interviewed by Ohio public radio--it is available on podcast. --Excerpted on the "page 99 test" blog. --Reviewed by Joseph Rosenbloom in the Boston Globe. Originally posted March 26, 2008 at PolicyByBlog ...
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BLOGWARS on Washingtonpost.com

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
I was interviewed by Chris Hopkins for the Washington Post about political blogging. It was a webchat with him typing my responses to live questions. An edited transcript follows. The link to the full transcript is here. Friday, May 2 at noon ET Books: 'Blogwars' David D. Perlmutter: Journalism Professor, University of Kansas. Friday, May 2, 2008; 12:00 PM online to explain how and to what extent political blogs influence campaigns and legislation, and how they serve to improve democracy and enrich political culture. ____________________ David D. Perlmutter: My name is David Perlmutter, and I'm a professor at the University of Kansas, and for years I've researched political communication, and three or four years ago I started paying attention to a raucous new venue for political communication, blogging. I saw it particularly in the Dean campaign. My new book, BLOGWARS, tracks the rise of political blogs in prominence and influence in general, the entry of political blogger into the corridors of political power and their integration into the...
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BLOGWARS on the DAILY SHOW with Jon Stewart (May 8)

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
I am scheduled to be on the DAILY SHOW with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central this Thursday (May 8) to talk about political blogging and my book, BLOGWARS. Everyone's first piece of advice for me about being a good guest: Don't try to be funny. I think I can manage that… The Daily Show has become an institution of American politics very much linked to a culture where people--especially younger voters--seek out political information from non-traditional sources. [A KU student (Nathan Rodriguez) in our school's master's program is writing his thesis on the show, to some extent based on his time as an intern.] The show is part of the political culture it satirizes and, in some cases, influences it. The show is considered a source of information, an explainer of politics, and of course a "speaker" of (funny) truth to power. TDS's effects are hard to quantify: Think in terms of Saturday Night Live's "effect" on the Clinton-Obama race! However, there...
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Daily Show: Blogs No Longer the Fringe

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Just finished taping The Daily Show. I was interviewed by Stewart himself. What stuck me was how the discussion about blogging was pretty straight and without any real mockery. I argue in BLOGWARS that 2008 is the year blogging has arrived—becoming part of journalism, entertainment media, and, of course politics. Well, I think one sign is that instead of making fun of bloggers as geeks and freaks Stewart himself stated that many talented people blog and that blogs were no longer a fringe phenomenon. That's a significant leap from the past. Lets spin back to when that was not so. Bloggers recall the March 2005 segment of The Daily Show that made fun of blogs and blogging via a satirical segment on "$ecret$ of New Journalism $ucce$$."* Jay Rosen, an NYU professor and one of the early academic proponents of blogging was interviewed by TDS correspondent Rob Corddry: it was one of those ambush affairs. So it's lucky for me that...
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The Origins of BLOGWARS, part 1

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
I got a chance on my DAILY SHOW appearance to mention when I first started working on my book, BLOGWARS. Here are more details--partly drawn from BLOGWARS itself. In my mind there were three points of origin of the book. 1. In 1996, a colleague and I conducted one of the first studies of presidential campaign Web sites. Our main finding was that they were mostly online "tackboards," posting information rather than developing content that exploited the hyperlinking and interactive qualities of the Internet. We stated, however, in the conclusions that: "It is currently possible, though no candidate has done this, to host an online talk show where the candidate fields questions from users throughout the nation." Then, as an afterthought, I began looking at "personal political Web sites" created not by the campaign apparatus—political consultants, managers, advisers, or parties—but by individuals who supported the candidate or some cause. Many were raucous and crude, but it did seem that personalized mass...
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Emergency Twitter: A Case of Possibilities

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Sharing information quickly: that's a basic aspect of blogging or any other new social interactive media. A good example of the positive possibilities of such a rapid dispersal of data comes from Jim Groom, who is an instructional-technology specialist and adjunct professor at the University of Mary Washington. He was attending a presentation at the University of Richmond when suddenly, the campus experienced a lockdown after a report that a gunman had been sighted at the library. At the time Groom was in a basement room and could not get a cell phone signal--he could however twitter, the short-blog format venue where you can quickly upload 140 character messages. He describes his twitter "tweets" in his blog after the events... "I had no internet access on my laptop, and asked Tom to log me into a UR computer so that I could get a sense what was going on. I went immediately to Twitter, as did several other folks from UR who were...
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BLOGWARS-related speaking events (update 07.10.08)

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Some recent BLOGWARS-related speaking events: I was a keynote speaker at the iModules Software User Conference of about 250 college alumni relations officers in Kansas City. My topic was "The Powers of Blogs for Outreach." [07.09.08] I was interviewed by WILL Radio (NPR Affiliate in Urbana, IL) about blogs and politics in the 2008 campaigns. The mp3 download is at: http://will.illinois.edu/focus580/weekly/ [06.24.08] Originally posted July 10, 2008 at PolicyByBlog ...
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Medical & Health Blogs (Medblogs)

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
Taking off from my work on political blogs I am now looking at health and medical blogs. I had noticed them over the years, especially ones by students and friends (see below). On March 26, 2008 I spoke to the "Grand Rounds" Public Health seminar at the KU Medical School and simulcast to online participants at other Kansas Public Health Departments. My presentation was titled "PAGING DR. BLOG! Nontraditional Sources of Health Information." It was a study of how blogs and other social-interactive media are changing the dissemination and reception of health information for both the public and health practitioners. Medical blogs (medblogs) fall into certain categories: (1) Personal Illness MedBlogs: blogs written or edited by people suffering from a specific disease, condition, or injury. These can be: (a) First-Person Focus is on self, really for personal processing of illness. Started by one or very few people who are ill. Emphasis is on personal "I" in writing style and topics. Often contains self-encouragement. Often contains a chronology or updates...
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Hippocratic Oath for Medical & Health Webloggers (medbloggers)

by David Perlmutter Comment Closed
As noted in my previous post I am now looking at the world of medical & health weblogs (Medblogs). One very important issue for medblogs resonates with a controversy in political blogging world: codes of ethics. Mary Schoen, one my students and I did a study of ethics codes in among political bloggers. In brief, we found very few had formal codes or even thought that they needed to have them. For health care professional who blog, the ethical issues are much acute. So I am working on an adaptation of the Hippocratic Oath to apply to the medblogger. Question: Should professionas who are MedBloggers take a Special Hippocratic Oath? (more…)...
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