The Quality of Discussion on the Economy in UK Political Blogs in 2008

The Quality of Discussion on the Economy in UK Political Blogs in 2008
John W. Robertson and Elizabeth McLaughlin
University of the West of Scotland
Correspondence: john.robertson@uws.ac.uk

In the early years of the twenty-first century, things look bleak for the political journalists of large newspapers—squeezed by the demands of celebrity culture, bullied by politicians and their aides, untrusted by the public and, now, displaced by a horde of amateur bloggers—or do they? This study is based upon an in-depth, comparative analysis of the quality of debate, on economic issues, in a selection of the UK's most popular, ‘independent’, political blogs and of their equivalents hosted by established newspaper writers and suggests a much more positive prognosis for the future of professional political journalists and, more importantly, for the public sphere, than has been commonly asserted elsewhere.