Blogs offer a space online where information usually overlooked by the mainstream media can be published, offering individuals the opportunity for amateur journalism and 34% of America bloggers do consider their online work as a form of journalism.
Blogs are a highly personalised medium with the ability to involve the reading public in an integral manner, and unlike the traditional media they are not edited or gate kept and for this reason traditional journalists argue about how much trust to place in the content of blogs, however, it is argued that the comments system facilitates peer review.
It has been suggested that there aren’t many bloggers in Ireland and therefore there have been few arguments over the differences between journalists and bloggers in Ireland. Nevertheless, this research found that almost 52% of Irish bloggers consider their blogging as a form of journalism, with over 58% of this group using their real name to publish online.
However, over 10% of bloggers described incidents where content was illegitimately sourced from their blogs by the traditional Irish media. Over 58% of this content was written work and almost 30% was in the form of either photographs or photo-shopped images.