Gatewatching.org

It's nice to see that we're getting some good press on the recent Social Media: State of the Art report for the Smart Services CRC - QUT has put out a press release for it now, and it's also been featured on Australian Policy Online. Mark Bahnisch and I are currently working on Volume Two of the report, which should be delivered to the CRC in a couple of weeks and will hopefully be released publicly not too long after that.

I'm crossposting this from Gatewatching.org, where a discussion about the influence of Australian political bloggers on wider political processes that was kicked off by Jason Wilson's recent posts on Tim Blair's move to the Daily Telegraph and Christian Kerr's summary dismissal of Ozblogistan's political combattants in The Australian has prompted me to finally post up some more information about the research we're currently engaged in at QUT, in collaboration with our excellent colleagues at the University St. Gallen in Switzerland. I'm also attaching a detailed discussion paper which documents our methodological model in some more detail - we'd love to get further feedback on this, from fellow researchers and interested bloggers alike. (For a more condensed version of this material, please see our paper for the ISEA 2008 conference in Singapore.)

We've been meaning to slow down the Club Bloggery series a little while we get busy with other research, but have found this difficult especially at a time when so many new topics present themselves. So, the latest instalment in the series went online about a week ago already, and I'm only now getting around to posting a link to it here - this time, we look at how the U.S. blogosphere is shaping up in its coverage of the current presidential primaries, and the actual election later this year.

Along with the previous one, this latest piece generated some, um, interesting responses from self-styled professional irritators Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, and their respective cheersquads; predictably, where they ascended beyond mere ad hominems the focus of their harrumphing appeared to centre around the fact that it's possible for research into blogging to be funded - in part - by taxpayer money. (Perhaps the logic here is "hey, if even I can be a blogger this blogging business really can't be worth researching"? How refreshingly humble.) Such comments are as common in the debating arsenal of the irrational right as they are stupidly reductive, of course - if the "Surely that money should be given to research for a cure for AIDS or cancer?" argument is taken to its logical conclusion, then 'surely' nothing save two or three major projects should receive all the funding available?

I'm happy to say that Club Bloggery has returned for 2008. Club Bloggery was our weekly series for ABC Online's Opinion pages during the 2007 election campaign - and while the election is now well and truly over, Jason, Barry, and I will continue to track developments in the Australian blogosphere and beyond during 2008 (if at a slightly more relaxed pace). While I was on holidays during the second half of January, the guys already posted an article discussing the mainstream media's feeding frenzy over Heath Ledger's death (and the role of blogs in setting the record straight) - and for our second instalment, we've returned to our old stomping grounds: we're considering what role Australia's political bloggers may be able to adopt now, in the aftermath of the election.

All of our pieces will also be published - sometimes in extended versions - on our group blog at Gatewatching.org, of course, along with other reflections on citizen journalism and news blogging.

Which Way in '08?

By Jason Wilson, Axel Bruns, Barry Saunders

The blogosphere and online independent media certainly proved themselves capable of offering an outstanding alternative narrative of last year's federal election. In several pieces during the campaign, we pointed out how the bloggers had led the way in offering participatory election coverage, and how organs like Crikey and New Matilda had managed to present a refreshing range of opinion that differed from the usual suspects in the MSM.