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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Blogs vs. blog: What should we be studying?

A piece just sent to me as part of the Poynter Institute’s E-Media Tidbits email distribution stopped me from working so I could gnaw on it a bit. This was tough. I’m facing so many deadlines this month that I haven’t been blogging much—or sleeping much—but this one grabbed me by the collar and demanded I pay attention.

The survey was conducted for the BBC by Globescan and released at the BBC-hosted WeMedia conference in London. Some 10,000 adults from 10 countries were interviewed about the media sources they trust and distrust. The results seem to fly in the face of the Edelman Trust Baramoter, which indicated trust in traditional media was waning dramatically while most people put most faith in “someone like me.” According to the Globescan survey, traditional news media was at the top of the list and blogs—the epitome of social media—were dead last, the least trusted source. According to Globescan President Doug Miller:

National TV is still the most trusted news source by a wide margin, although the Internet is gaining ground among the young. The jury is still out on blogs—just as many people distrust them as trust them.

I suppose if you asked me if I trusted the sum total of content produced by mainstream media more or less than the sum total of content in the blogosphere, I wouldn’t hesitate to cast my vote for mainstream media. There are a lot of blogs out there I don’t trust for a variety of reasons ranging from the motives behind the people writing them to not having a clue who’s writing them. Then there are those that are simply so outgrageous they defy credibility. And let’s not forget the universe of blogs that aren’t even trying to be trusted information sources; they’re just having fun.

Indeed, I have no doubt there are those who find this blog not credible or outrageous. That’s fine; everybody decides for themselves what to believe and what not to believe.

But there’s another way to view the issue that the Globescan study didn’t address: Do you find the blogs you regularly read more or less credible than any given story reported by the media? In this case, I have come to know the styles, biases, strenghts and weaknesses of the blogs I routinely read. Those that don’t stand up to my own test eventually fall off my news reader. I’m left with a collection of a couple hundred blogs covering a variety of topics in which my trust is quite high. The fact that I find Mike Manuel or Josh Hallett particularly believable and credible does not, however, mean that I find blogs in general credible or believable.

So the question of blog credibility is not necessarily answered because 10,000 adults indicated they don’t trust blogs as a group. Given that blogs are a component of the social media landscape, most people don’t approach blogs as a category; rather, they approach them as individual points of contact. To ask if you trust blogs is like asking if you trust people. There are plenty of people I trust, but I’m not likely to have someone I don’t know watch my wallet for me.

05/04/06 | 6 Comments | Blogs vs. blog: What should we be studying?

Comments

  • 1.Shel, I saw that news story too (and blogged about it). I think the 3% stat is the thin edge of the wedge. I hope this research is done annually so we can track blog credibility as it grows. I think it will be quite a different story in 12 month's time.

    Sherrilynne Starkie | May 2006

  • 2.Very interesting post, Shel. At the end of it, you hit the nail on the head. When we read a blog, it's a more personal experience, compared to reading a newspaper or magazine. Even if you follow columnists in the mainstream press (with their personal viewpoints), you don't get the same feeling reading the NY Times as you do reading Shel Holtz or Robert Scoble or whomever.

    I would love to see how these blog-credibility stats track in the future.

    donna papacosta | May 2006 | Toronto

  • 3.Shel,
    What a thought provoking post. You really made some great observations. I agree with Sherrilynne and Donna, it would be interesting to see how this report evolves over time.
    Erin Caldwell and I were just talking about this concept the other day, sans the report. She wrote a post about Internet credibility spurred by a comment placed by the h/she it on my Forward post. A warning to the younger, more impressionable readers.
    This line was outstanding: "To ask if you trust blogs is like asking if you trust people." Thanks again for the insight.

    Luke | May 2006 | Ohio

  • 4.You make a great point about blog credibility. There are many useless blogs out there. However, there is also a lot of worthless media out there, particularly television media. At least with a blog, you usually know where they stand on issues instead of having the media agenda feed to you as the "all knowing truth" as TV pretends. I distrust everyone equally until I get to know where they stand. :)

    Jen | May 2006 | Orlando, FL

  • 5.I don't think that blogs are ready to be equated with the "old" media in terms of trust. For all that we like to spout off about how the mainstream media is too corporate or just doesn't "get it," they have been a trusted information source for a long time and they carry a lot of credibility with many people.

    Perhaps it's my bias as a former reporter, but I'm not ready to throw out the entire mainstream media structure (not yet, anyway.) I agree with you that whether I "trust" the information I get from a blog has more to do with my impressions of the writer than it does with it coming from a blog.

    I assume a level of accuracy with stories in a newspaper. I'm confident that most stories in the paper have gone through some sort of a rudimentary truth test (via the editors) before they get printed. Of course, that's not to say they are necessarily true or accurate - only that there is a test that they have gone through.

    I am not surprised that a lot of people still consider the mainstream media the most reliable form of information. But I also agree that it's going to be interesting to see how these surveys look in the next year or two.

    Dave Traynor | May 2006 | Hamilton, Ontario

  • 6.Just before the local elections this very interesting piece of research was published by Globespan on behalf of the BBC (PDF download). It revealed that more people trust the government in Britain than they do the media. Most of the PR commentators on blogs have focused on the fact that blogs were the least trusted source. However, I'm just as int...

    http://www.stuartbruce.biz/2006/05/politicians_mor | May 2006

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