Weblogs and the Epistemology of the News: Some Trends in Online Journalism

Abstract

Journalism has been slow to develop distinctive forms in response to the new contexts provided by the internet. One rapidly developing form, unique to the world wide web, is the weblog. This article reviews the claims made by proponents of the form and explores, through the case study of a weblog produced by the British Guardian newspaper, epistemological differences to the dominant Anglo-American news form. The article argues that the rearticulation in this institutional product of the relation between journalists and users, of the claim to authority made in the news text and of the news text as product, provides historians of both journalism and new media with a case study of the adaptation of journalism to new contexts.