Blog Networks

The blog network is made of people. We are the nodes, actively filtering and retransmitting knowledge. Clearly this architecture can help manage the glut of information. More subtly, it can also help ensure that no vital inputs are suppressed because nobody has to rely on a single source. If one of the feeds I monitor doesn’t react to some event in a given domain, another probably will. When they all react, I know it was an especially important event.

Depending how you look at it, one of the strengths or weaknesses of blogs is that bloggers are under no obligation to offer “fair and balanced” reporting. Blogs, as a news source, tend to be very focused and highly opinionated. While traditional media sources are not the perfect example of an open and diverse press, there has at least been an expectation that the editors and producers have a responsibility to provide both sides of any story. In the blogosphere, that responsibility is reversed. The reader is now required to monitor the appropriate channels in order to get the whole story. That’s not to say that readers never needed to monitor to more than one source before, but that in the blogosphere it is absolutely essential.

Thus, while John points out that “nobody has to rely on a single source,” I’d like to also point out that within the blogosphere, nobody can rely on a single source.

Even with multiple sources, blog networks are vulnerable to Group Think, that is, that bloggers will both link and more importantly read other blogs with which they most closely agree. The result is a blog echo chamber (or a blog planetarium).

An interesting experiment (perhaps already completed by someone) would be to map links and trackbacks between blogs. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find something akin to Valdis Krebs’ maps of political books purchased on Amazon.

This isn’t to say that the blogosphere cannot be a “planetary nervous system” sifting and wading through the daily deluge of information, but that only those individuals and systems which take into account the sphere as a whole and not just the local network will be assured an accurate and informed picture.