Article

When opinion leaders blog: new forms of citizen interaction

Authors:

Andrea Kavanaugh,

John M. Carroll,

Joseph Schmitz,

Manuel Pérez-Quiñones,

Philip IsenhourAuthors Info & Claims

dg.o '06: Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Digital government research

Pages 79 - 88

https://doi.org/10.1145/1146598.1146628

Published: 21 May 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Web logs (i.e., blogs) provide enhanced opportunities to extend capabilities of traditional electronic mail and discussion lists, especially in the hands of opinion leaders; such tools offer greater social interaction and informal discussion, and opportunities for conversational content production. Because blogging tools are simple, available, and free, users can easily communicate with others in their social networks, their geographic communities and the interested public. Blogs represent self-organizing social systems that can help many persons to: 1) interact collaboratively, 2) learn from each other by exchanging ideas and information, and 3) solve collective problems. For opinion leaders -- that small percentage of the population that is socially and politically active -- blogs represent another channel to disseminate ideas and garner feedback from members of their social network. The present research offers findings from a random household survey of citizens of Blacksburg and Montgomery County, Virginia about citizens' interests and attitudes towards local government, discussion of political issues, and their Internet use. We find that opinion leaders who engage in some form of blogging (read or write) are more likely to be male, extroverted and educated than bloggers who are not politically active. They score higher than other bloggers on measures of offline and online political interests and activities, community collective efficacy, and the size and heterogeneity of their political discussion networks. As such, their use of blogs may serve as a growing new communication channel to exercise their informal influence.

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Index Terms

When opinion leaders blog: new forms of citizen interaction
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing

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cover image ACM Other conferences

dg.o '06: Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Digital government research

May 2006

526 pages

Conference Chairs:
José A. B. Fortes
University of Florida
,
Ann Macintosh
Napier University

Sponsors

NSF: National Science Foundation

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Digital Government Society of North America

Publication History

Published: 21 May 2006

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dg.o '06

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dg.o '06: Digital government research

May 21 - 24, 2006

California, San Diego, USA

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dg.o '06 Paper Acceptance Rate 20 of 58 submissions, 34%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 150 of 271 submissions, 55%

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Tsang SRojas H(2020)Opinion Leaders, Perceived Media Hostility and Political ParticipationCommunication Studies10.1080/10510974.2020.179120371:5(753-767)Online publication date: 16-Jul-2020
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Kaiser JFähnrich BRhomberg MFilzmaier P(2018)What Happened to the Public Sphere? The Networked Public Sphere and Public Opinion FormationHandbook of Cyber-Development, Cyber-Democracy, and Cyber-Defense10.1007/978-3-319-09069-6_31(433-459)Online publication date: 6-Oct-2018
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