Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers As the Fifth Estate [Paperback]

Stephen D. Cooper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0922993475 | ISBN-13: 978-0922993475

Who’s Watching the Watchdog, Anyway? Just ask CBS News. In 2004, the network came into possession of allegedly authentic National Guard documents which claimed that President Bush had failed to perform his duties when he was in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. But the documents were forged, and bloggers, not the mainstream news media, broke that story. From the Introduction: The metaphor of watchdog has long been popular as shorthand for the structural role of the free press in a representative democracy. ... But what of that watchdog’s leash? If the people need a watchdog to make sure the institution of government does not abuse the power they have granted it, would there not be a need for a comparable check on the press, as a social institution with power in its own right? ... This little book is not intended as either an endorsement or a criticism of the ideological or political views of any bloggers ... Instead, this work is intended as an exploration of the distinct types of media criticism which have evolved in the blogosphere ... . [W]e might now be seeing the emergence of a Fifth Estate in our social system, a watcher of the watchdog. In one sentence, the thesis of this little book is that the blogosphere is in the process of maturing into a full-fledged social institution, albeit a non-traditional one: emergent, self-organizing, and self-regulating.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Stephen D. Cooper (Ph.D. Rutgers) is associate professor of communication at Marshall University, where he teaches courses in media and society, business and professional communication, computer-mediated communication, and group communication. He is author or coauthor of articles published in Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, Review of Communication, The Kentucky Journal of Communication, The American Communication Journal, and The New Jersey Journal of Communication.

Product Details

• Paperback: 355 pages
• Publisher: Marquette Books (June 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0922993475
• ISBN-13: 978-0922993475
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #565,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Works. Cooper proves his point., October 24, 2006

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Colleenie Weenie (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers As the Fifth Estate (Paperback)

If you want to know anything and everything about how blogging affects media, then read this book. Cooper goes into great detail about how every aspect of journalism has been critiqued by bloggers, often making points so huge that stories by bloggers become stories for the MSM (mainstream media) as a direct result of a blogger's findings. Blogging is sometimes thought of as useless or juvenile when, in reality, has had an extremely large affect on media. Cooper proves his point and backs it up with plenty of examples from real blogs. If you just want to know the main points of his arguments, it isn't necessary to read all of the examples (he provides more than enough). But if you are interested in specific examples, then you won't mind reading a lot of them.