THE EFFECT OF THE INTERNET ON HOMOGENEITY OF THE MEDIA AGENDA: A TEST OF THE FRAGMENTATION THESIS

By Jae Kook Lee

This study tests competing hypotheses about whether diversification of news channels results in fiagmentation of public opinion and decline in media power to provide the public with common subjects to think and talk about. Employing a content analysis of blog posts and mainstream media news stories during the 2004 presidential campaign, this study finds that the blog agenda is similar to that of mainstream media. Furthermore, political blogs cover the election with virtually the same agenda, regardless of their liberal or conservative political leaning. People are likely exposed to a fairly stable agenda across mainstream media and Internet news outlets, despite the diversification of information channels.

With new technologies, media channels have become increasingly diverse, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The diversification has produced serious debates about the common agenda of public affairs in society and the media's role in contributing to a social consensus. Two competing hypotheses provide opposing predictions regarding the function of media in this new environment. One school contends that the diversification of media will result in fragmentation of public opinion and thus the decline of the media's power to provide the public with a common agendathat is, common subjects to think and talk about.' The other predicts that, despite the plethora of media outlets, the news and information provided to the public are highly redundant. Thus, the effects of media continue.^ Simply put, the main question that arises is whether there is still a common agenda, or if the many and varied forms of media have diluted public consensus on the most important issues in society. The present study tests the two hypotheses by examining whether the blog issue agenda is correlated with the mainstream media agenda. Because of its unique nature, blogging provides numerous opportunities to address many scholarly questions. Each blog functions as a news medium communicating information and opinion with a high degree of interactivity. Blogs have gained extensive readership through several important incidents including the 9/11 terrorist attack, the U.S. invasion
]ae Kook Lee is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism, University of Texas. An J&MC Quarterly earlier version of this study was a part of his master's thesis and presented to the AE]MC Vol. 84, No. 4 at the 2006 convention in San Francisco, California. He thanks Renita Coleman for Winter2007 helpful comments and doctoral student Nak-Won Jung for help collecting data used in J^tlf^rrK.r this study. 1)2007AEJMC
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of Iraq, and the 2004 U.S. presidential election. While blogs function as news media for a sizable audience, the blogosphere comprises constellations of individual blogs. With millions of different blogs, it is possible that each blog posts content distinct from one another and from the mainstream media. Therefore, the blogosphere is a good place to test competing hypotheses regarding fragmentation of the public agenda and effects of media. If there is a significant correlation between blog and mainstream media issue agendas, it suggests that traditional media still preserve the power to set the agenda about public affairs despite growth in number of information channels. Intermedia agenda setting is employed as the theoretical framework. The current study investigates the relationship between the blog agenda and the mainstream media agenda in coverage of the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Since the Chapel Hill study,' agendasetting researchers have developed the idea of intermedia agenda setting, which can be used to compare different media in terms of their agendas.'' The testing of the hypotheses is a straightforward examination of whether agenda-setting effects occur between mainstream media and blogs.

Literature Review

internet and Media Effects. The explosive increase in the number of news channels has triggered concern with audience fragmentation and, thus, a decline in social cohesion. The Internet has many characteristics which can function to fragment the audience,^ including its ability to enable people to focus on many different issues.'^ The consequences for democracy can be better understood with a clear definition of fragmentation. Sunstein wrote: "The problem here comes from the creation of diverse speech communities, whose members make significantly different communication choices. A possible consequence is considerable difficulty in mutual understanding. When society is fragmented in this way, diverse groups will tend to polarize..."' Fragmentation prevents people from sharing a common experience and from understanding one another. This conceptualization has guided other research.^ Neuman also stated, "Concern has arisen that the common cultural and political identity of Americans, traditionally reinforced by the mass media, may be lacking."^ It is not likely that a fragmented audience can have constructive discussions about the same social issues and reach consensus to solve problems." The result is clearly deleterious for social cohesion and the proper functioning of democracy." The process of fragmentation spurred by new technologies has often involved the role of mass media. Chaffee and Metzger claimed that fragmentation is a serious challenge to core mass communication theories such as agenda setting, cultivation, and critical theory, all of which assume a centralized mass media system.'^ McCombs has said that two assumptions must be met for fragmentation to have occurred: (1) Large numbers of people must have access to the Web and regularly go to many different sites for news, information, and commentary; and (2) the agendas to which people are
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exposed on the Web must be highly divergent rather than highly redundant with the agendas found in the traditional news media." The present study addresses the second assumption. Recent studies found homogeneity of news agendas rather than heterogeneity on the Web. A cross-lagged analysis found that agenda-setting effects occurred between online newspapers and an online wire service in South Korea." Studies also found an agenda-setting effect between Internet bulletin boards and traditional media in the United States and South Korea." However, the results were suggestive rather than conclusive because evidence supporting the homogeneity hypothesis could be applied only to online wire services and bulletin boards. The fragmentation hypothesis rests on the assumption that new technologies rapidly diversify news channels by developing "interactive" media tools. In this sense, testing of the homogeneity/fragmentation hypothesis should be done with information channels which have unprecedented, interactive, and idiosyncratic features. Therefore, this study investigates the homogeneity of news agendas between traditional media and blogs. Given the conceptualization of fragmentation offered above, this is a direct and appropriate test of the fragmentation thesisnamely, to examine whether the media agenda is similar across diversified media outiets in the Internet age. Based upon extant literature, a strong correlation between the two different agendas is anticipated. Theoretical support for this notion comes from the intermedia agenda-setting effect with previous studies providing evidence along this line. Major news media, especially the New York Times and the wire services, have been found to influence other media in shaping their agendas. A study of tifty-two Ohio newspaper and television journalists who used wire services to select stories found the journalists were influenced greatiy by the decisions of a relatively few editors operating at the regional, national, and international bureaus of the wire services.'*' The New York Times had a significant impact on agendas of other news media in a study examining the coverage of the 1986 cocaine problem by five major newspapers, the three TV networks. Time, and Newsweek.^^ Intermedia agenda setting also was found repeatedly in different online settings." Blogs as News Media. Blogs have formed an inter-connected space, the blogosphere, in which people can express and discuss their opinions at minimal expense. The blogs' potential for individuation has drawn scholarly attention to the blogosphere, in that each blog may seem to present idiosyncratic information and opinions. The uniqueness of blog content makes the blogosphere perfect for testing whether the current wave of digitized communication fragments the public agenda. The blogosphere has expanded at an enormous speed. The number of blogs was estimated at fewer than 50 in 1999 but has grown into the thousands in 2000." A blog-tracking company, Technorati, Inc., reported almost 112.8 million blogs worldwide as of November 2007. The Pew Internet Survey reported an estimated 32 million Americans were blog users by the end of 2004.^" According to Truthlaidbear.com, a blog-tracking Web site, top blogs had almost 1 million hits a day. Thus
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blogs have come to enjoy a sizable audience collectively, although the audience is still a minority of the overall population. Numerous blogs are connected with one another by hyperlinks, which bloggers use to make references to other blogs. Hyperlinks enable people to use information more actively in a two-way media system.^' This allows blogs to provide the audience with a diversity of information not possible in any individual blog and helps support the claim that blogs dealing with public affairs function as news media for the public. To help answer the main question of fragmentation, this study is interested in the substantive characteristics of posts in blogs functioning as news media. Recent findings suggest that the agendas among public affairs blogs and the mainstream media are more homogeneous than heterogeneous. Blogs were likely to refer to mainstream news stories as original sources of information, with links to news stories accounting for 38.6% of all outgoing links, followed by links to other blogs, official government, and so forth.^^ Reese and colleagues concluded that blogs were heavily dependent on reports of mainstream media.^^ Iraq war blogs were found to have an even stronger link with mainstream mediaabout 60% of all outgoing links.^'' Given the evidence of intermedia agenda setting and the tendency of blogs to link to mainstream media, it is probable that blogs share a common agenda with mainstream media. The nature of blogging suggests a rationale in favor of agenda-setting effects between mainstream media and blogs. First, blogs are heavily dependent on the mainstream news media as sources of information. Such dependence is inevitable, in that bloggers have limited resources to cover news, with a handful of contributors at best. In addition, bloggers are presumed to be exposed to traditional mass media, just as the general public is, and thus, are subject to the same agenda-setting effects. For these reasons, it is appropriate to anticipate an intermedia agenda-setting effect between traditional media and blogs. HI: The rank order of the overall blog agenda will have a positive correlation with that of the mainstream media agenda. Blogging in the 2004 Election. Blogs are thought to have played a significant part in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, including the controversy over George W. Bush's National Guard service.^^ Political blogs were connected mainly to blogs with similar ideologiesliberal blogs linked to other liberal blogs, and conservative blogs linked to other conservative blogs. Studies found limited evidence of fragmentation in the blogosphere. For example, blogs that focused on Catholicism connected to other blogs on Catholicism.^^ Homeschooling blogs and elite blogs also linked to each other.^' Kumar and colleagues found 300 tightly connected "interest clusters."^* Elite, or "A-list," blogs are those that are most widely read, cited in the mass media, and receive the most inbound links from other blogs.^' The blogosphere also is divided by political ideology. In an analysis of forty blogs in the two months before election day in 2004, the liberal and conservative blogs linked to others primarily
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with the same political ideology or partisanship.'" The finding points direcfly to the problem of fragmentation.^' While clustering is much clearer to see, fragmentation is much less conclusive. Reese and colleagues reported half of linked-to sites were non-partisan.'^ They suggested that blogs were less segregated by political ideology than expected. In sum, studies suggested two conflicting findings: (1) that blogs depend heavily on news reports from traditional media, called "dependence," which makes their agendas similar; and (2) that blogs link to other blogs with similar interests and political ideology, called "clustering," which fragments the agendas. There is not enough evidence to conclusively say which of these flndings is more powerful. The question, then, is which of the two factorsdependence on mainstream media news reports, or the tendency toward clustering by ideologyis more influential in predicting a blog's news agenda. If the dependence effect is more powerful, blogs' agendas should be more homogeneous across the clusters, but if the clustering effect is more influential, the result will be the oppositea more heterogeneous agenda. As described above, blogs serve as news media in that they share many features with traditional news media. Even though liberal and conservative blogs have different opinions and deal with different political flgures, blogs from both ideologies are likely to have agendas similar to those of the mainstream media. If blogs have similar issue priorities as the mainstream media, it is also probable that liberal and conservative blogs have agendas similar to each other, regardless of their differing opinions about those issues. This suggests that a homogeneous news agenda exists among numerous political or public affairs blogs, providing evidence against the fragmentation thesis. H2a: The rank order of the conservative blog agenda will have a positive correlation with that of the mainstream media agenda. H2b: The rank order of the liberal blog agenda will have a positive correlation with that of the mainstream media agenda. Sample. This study involved content analysis of news coverage of twelve issues during the 2004 presidential election. This study collected 408 stories from four mainstream media and 435 posts from eight blogs over eight weeks from the Thursday after Labor Day to the day after election day. Conducting an analysis during an election period has both benefits and disadvantages. On the one hand, there is a possibility that mainstream media reports and blog posts are highly focused on campaign coverage which is absolutely not typical. On the other hand, a campaign provides an opportunity for a wide variety of issues and also a bigger audience for both mainstream media and blogs. It was observed that the number of blogs and the discourse in the blogosphere
THE EFFECT OF THE INTERNET ON HOMOGENEITY OF THE MEDIA AGENDA

Method

grew explosively during the 2004 campaign period.^^ Despite the possible disadvantage, the benefits of using the 2004 campaign make it an appropriate period for this research. There were many blogs whose main interest lies in different areas, such as sports. Therefore, this study limits its analysis to blogs dealing mainly with public issues. Eight blogs analyzed were Little Green Footballs, The Washington Monthly, Captain's Quarters, PoliPundit.com, Onegoodmove, Wizbang, The Left Coaster, and Swing State Project. These were selected from a pool of blogs which have more than 10,000 visits a day and archives of the past stories and comments threaded to the stories back to the 2004 campaign period. The selection of blogs is not completely random, because this study requires a balanced representation of liberal and conservative ideology on the blogosphere. Nevertheless, specific blogs and blog posts were selected randomly, after making a list of blogs which meet conditions stated above. For selection of blogs, a Web directory was chosen. The Web directory (www.truthlaidbear.com) searches approximately 59,000 Web sites and provides a list of individual blogs. The directory also offers a list of rankings, updated daily, based on their citation from other Web sites and blogs. This study used rankings of blogs by traffic to reflect a blog's status as a news source. To perform analysis related to the goal of the research and minimize bias, the four conservative-leaning and four liberal-leaning blogs were chosen. The conservative blogs are Little Green Footballs, Captain's Quarters, PoliPundit.com, and Wizbang. The liberal blogs are The Washington Monthly, Onegoodmove, The Left Coaster, and Swing State Project. In selecting blogs, two human coders made decisions about political leanings of individual blogs. The coding of political leanings closely matches previous findings.^'' For selection of blog posts, the coders used random number tables to choose one story from each blog per day. The mainstream news media used for the analysis were the New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press, and Time magazine. The media outlets were selected because of their proven representativeness of the media agenda. The New York Times and the Associated Press have been consistently found to affect other print and broadcast media.^^ CNN and Time magazine were selected as representatives of cable TV news and news magazines, respectively. As the viewership of FOX has risen, exclusion of FOX may seem problematic. However, there is little evidence yet that the FOX agenda is significantly different from that of other mainstream media, despite people's perception of its conservative leaning. The difference in coverage between FOX and other media was mostly observed in the way they covered issues, and, more important, the FOX agenda in war coverage was similar to the CNN agenda."^ Further, FOX and CNN audiences overlap each other to considerable degree.'^ In this sense, the current selection of mainstream media outlets is appropriate for investigation of whether the blog agenda deviates from mainstream media, the central question of this study. Using the Lexis/Nexis database service, ten to fifteen stories were randomly drawn from each news outlet per week. For the analysis of blog
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and traditional media agendas, coders coded all blog posts and news stories into one of twelve issue categories, following the master code of "most important problems" question in the 2004 American National Election Studies survey.^* The "most important problem" question has been widely used in various agenda-setting studies.^' Operational Measures. Coders assigned each story to an issue category independently. The coders completed an intercoder reliability check with a subsample of stories (N = 86), which represents 11% of the whole sample {N = 843). The Scott's pi"" coefficient of inter-coder reliability was 0.90 for the whole sample. The coefficient for the blog sample was 0.82 and for traditional media was 0.92. This reliability is acceptable by most standards of content analysis."' Data Analysis. The data analysis follows previous agenda-setting literature using rank-order correlation of issue agendas."^ Based on the previous studies," this study defined an agenda as a ranked list of issues based on frequency of stories. For instance, if a news story of the New York Times mainly talks about the problem of health care, this story was counted as being about a social welfare issue. For analysis at the aggregate level, frequencies of stories of all four mainstream media and eight blogs were combined and ranked. Ranks were also calculated separately for aggregated mainstream media and aggregated blog agendas. To test H2, ranks were also calculated for aggregated conservative blogs and aggregated liberal blogs. Spearman's rho correlations were calculated to measure relationships between and among agendas.

Descriptive Data. Table 1 illustrates what issues each news outlet Results talked about and reveals several patterns of coverage during the campaign period. The political blogs tend to deal with fewer issues than the mainstream media. The New York Times covered nine issues out of the twelve categories, CNN covered seven, the Associated Press eleven, and Time magazine nine. For the blogs. Swing State Project covered only two issues, and The Left Coaster covered three. The number of issues covered by individual political blogs was between two and six. The discrepancy demonstrates that the issue agenda for blogs was less diverse than that of the mainstream media. Political blogs most frequenfly talked about issues related to the functioning of the government. Little Green Footballs, a conservative blog, posted on the functioning of government 23 times out of 56 in total, and Washington Monthly, a liberal blog, wrote about the issue 31 out of 36 times. The number of blog entries in which the functioning of the government was prominent was 274 out of the 435 total. The proportion of this category over the entire blog sample was 63%. During the 2004 campaign, the mainstream media also dealt most frequently with the functioning of the government. The number of stories in which the issue was prominent was 135 out of the 408 in total. The proportion of this issue over the entire mainstream media sample was 33%, far lower than that of blog samples.
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TABLE 1 Agenda of the 2004 Presidential Election by News Outlet: Frequencies (and Ranks)
NYT CNN AP Time LGF WM CQ PP OGM WB LC SSP*

Functioning of Gov't Foreign Affairs Public Order Social Welfare Nonpolitical Economy & Business National Defense Natural Resources Racial Issues Technology

37 (1) 29 (2) 17 (3) 12 (4) 7 (5) 6 (6) 4 (7) 4 (7) 1 (9) 0

46 (1) 34 (2) 11 (3) 6 (5) 10 (4) 1 (6) 1 (6) 0

23 (2) 25 (1) 17 (3) 8 (5) 3 (6) 16 (4) 2 (9) 3 (6) 3 (6) 2 (9)

29 (1) 16 (2) 12 (3) 3 (6) 8 (5) 12 (3) 2 (7) 1 (8) 0

23 (1) 12 (3) 14 (2) 0

31 (1) 7 (3) 8 (2) 1 (6) 7 (3) 2 (5) 0

26 (1) 16 (2) 2 (5) 1 (6) 4 (4) 0

37 (1) 3 (4) 6 (2) 0

33 (1) 9 (2) 3 (4) 0

27 (1) 9 (3) 9 (3) 0

50 (1) 0

47 (1) 0

2 (2) 0

5 (4) 0

2 (5) 4 (3) 3 (4) 0

6 (3) 1 (6) 2 (5) 0

10 (2) 0

2 (2) 0

1 (3) 0

2 (5) 0

7 (3) 0

1 (5) 0

1 (8)

Labor

Agriculture

1 (11)

Total

117

104

103

84

56

56

56

55

54

56

53

49

LGF: Little Green Footballs WM: The Washington Monthly CQ: Captain's Quarters PP: PoliPundit.com OGM: Onegoodmove WB: Wizbang LF: The Left Coaster SSP: Swing State Project

The high number of stories about the functioning of the government is not surprising for two reasons. The NES master code of the most important problem includes issues of election and campaign in this category. Also, because the sampling period exactly matches the presidential 752
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TABLE 2 Correlations of the Media Agenda with Blog Agenda NYT

CNN AP Time Aggregated Media

Conservative

Little Green Footballs Captain's Quarters PoliPundit.com Wizbang Washington Monthly onegoodmove The Left Coaster Swing State Project

.78** .80** .75** .75** .91** .80** .57 .48 .90** 12

.90** .90** .86** .88** .93** .94** .60* .56 .94** 12

.62* .59* .69* .55 .84** .68* .60* .29 .94* 12

.77** .76** .86** .74** .91** .87** .66* .48 .97** 12

.79** .77** .86**

.75**

Liberal

.91** .87** .66* .48 .93** 12

Aggregated Blog N **p< .01; * p < .05

N = number of issue categories in content analysis

campaign period, both blogs and mainstream media were likely to deal with issues in this category. Hypotheses Testing. Table 2 reports all Spearman's rho correlation coefficients among individual blogs and traditional media. Table 3 reports correlation coefficients between blogs and mainstream media by blogs' political leaning at the aggregate level. HI predicted that the rank order of the overall blog agenda will have a positive correlation with that of the mainstream media agenda. To test this hypothesis, this study conducted two waves of correlation tests both at individual and aggregate level. Table 2 details this test of the basic hypothesis about the relationship of blogs with the mainstream media agenda. There are a number of distinctive points in the 32 comparisons of the blog agendas with the mainstream media agendas at an individual level. All of the correlations are positive, and 26 of the 32 are statistically significant. Most of the correlations illustrate a very strong relationship between the blog agenda and the mainstream media agenda on the coverage of the 2004 presidential election. The median correlation is +.79 for the 26 significant ones, and the median value is +.76 for all 32 correlations. Furthermore, the blog agenda was compared with the mainstream media agenda at an aggregate level, and the finding is also presented in Table 2. All of the correlations are positive and statistically significant.
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TABLE 3 Correlations of the Media Agenda with Blog Agenda by Political Leaning
NYT CNN AP Time Aggregated Media

Conservative Blogs Liberal Blogs N **p< .01; * p < .05

.90** .90** 12

.99** .99** 12

.77* .78* 12

.93*' .94*' 12

.93* .94* 12

N = number of issue categories in content analysis

The correlation of the aggregated blog agenda with the individual mainstream media ranges from +.77 to +.99, all of which are strong. Finally, the correlation between the entire blog agenda and the aggregate mainstream media agenda is +.93. All strongly support HI. H2 predicted that blog agendas are highly similar to mainstream media agendas, regardless of their political leanings. To test the hypotheses related to political leanings of blogs, two sets of sub-hypotheses were posited. Comparisons were conducted between the individual mainstream media and the aggregated conservative and liberal blog agendas. The aggregated media agenda was also compared with the aggregated conservative and liberal blog agendas. Table 3 details these analyses. H2a predicted that the rank order of the conservative blog agenda will have a positive correlation with that of the mainstream media agenda. Fifteen of the 16 individual comparisons of the mainstream media agenda with the conservative blog agenda are statistically significant and all are positive. The median value is +.77, for all 16 correlations. Furthermore, the correlation of the aggregated mainstream media agenda with the aggregated conservative blog agenda is +.93. This is strong support for H2a. H2b predicted that the rank order of the liberal blog agenda will have a positive correlation with that of the mainstream media agenda. In the individual comparisons of the mainstream media agenda with the liberal blog agenda, 11 of the 16 are statistically significant and all are positive. For the 11 significant correlations, the median value is +.81, and for all 16 correlations, the median value is +.67. In an aggregated comparison of the mainstream media agenda with the liberal blog agenda, the correlation is +.94. This strongly supports H2b.

Discussion

This study provides evidence supporting the claim that the media agenda is fairly stable across news outlets despite growing diversification of information channels. Political or public affairs blogs talked about almost the same issues as traditional media in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. In 32 comparisons among the four mainstream media sources
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and the eight blogs, the median correlation is +.79 in 26 statistically significant instances, supporting the hypothesis that the mainstream media and blogs covered similar topics in the election. Analysis of the blog agenda in relation to political leaning provides further evidence for the argument. In two separate sets of 16 comparisons between the mainstream media and blog agenda in relation to political ideology, the median value of the correlations is +m for conservative blogs and +.84 for liberal blogs. The finding is strong support for the hypothesis that conservative and liberal blogs dealt with almost the same agenda, although their opinions towards the issues may often be the opposite of each other. Opposing sides of the political blogosphere covered news with nearly identical priority, even though they remained divided by individual bloggers' political inclinations. As indicated, audience fragmentation is a serious threat to the healthy functioning of democracy, and new technologies have the potential to fragment the audience. Nevertheless, the process of fragmentation would seem to require, as a precedent, a heterogeneous media agenda. Evidence in this study clearly indicates that this condition has not been met. As predicted, the substantive nature of blogs explains the homogeneity to some extent. Limited resources for gathering information make blogs heavily dependent on reports from traditional media. The comparably fewer issues that blogs cover are more evidence for this argument. Bloggers cannot be free from general agenda-setting effects because they also are members of the public. Studies suggested that two opposing factors affect blogs' agendas in coverage of public affairs news: dependence and clustering. Dependence should reinforce mainstream media agendas on blogs via agenda setting. Clustering should lead to idiosyncratic, fragmented agendas of blogs confined within their segregated communities. Findings in this study demonstrate that dependence effects are more powerful than clustering in shaping blogs' agendas. The results of this study suggest that a heterogeneous agenda is not likely to appear across different media channels as long as newer media are bound by limited resources and dependent on traditional media in reporting. In addition, the nature of content producers as a part of the general public also has a limiting effect on agenda diversification. Findings indicate that classic media effects may still perpetuate in spite of the emergence of new technologies which possess audiencefragmenting potential. We have a constellation of different news sources, but agendas coming out of numerous channels are very similar to one another. In this light, this study has made a contribution to agenda-setting theory by exploring the relationship between the traditional media agenda and the blog agenda. The findings add evidence of agenda-setting influence of mainstream media on bloggers and blogs. However, the significant correlations found are not perfect evidence of an agenda-setting effect, in that they only suggest relationships between two agendas. To claim an agenda-setting effect from mainstream media to blogs, a research design that establishes time order and functional relationships is necessary.
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This study does not address another possible problem of fragmentation: worsening political apathy.'*'' Increases in media choices, enabling people to easily seek entertainment-oriented outlets, may increase non-participation in political affairs. Because this study examined only homogeneity of the news media agenda, it was unable to answer questions about the problems of people attracted only to entertainment-oriented media: future studies should address this. More detailed examination of blog posts may detect a possible relationship between blogs' political leanings and tone of the posts. This study did not consider attributes of each blog post; it only measured the agendas of blogs and traditional media at the issue level and the correlations between them. Studies of attribute agenda setting may be able to examine the effect of blogs' political leanings in a more detailed way. Along this line, a closer look at coefficients in Table 2 suggests interesting points. The mean correlation between conservative blogs and traditional media is .79, while mean between liberal blogs and media is .73. It is remarkable that the so-called "liberal media" agenda correlates more strongly with the conservative blog agenda. The difference raises several questions with regard to attribute agenda setting. The conservative blogs may use reports of mainstream media to criticize the substance and tone of coverage. Furthermore, the interaction of political leaning and perception of the information quality may complicate the complexity of the problem. A study within the attribute agenda-setting framework may be able to answer these questions to some extent. In this vein, analysis of online news content such as blog posts at the attribute level may provide more understanding of their function. Although the findings indicate a homogeneous agenda across mainstream media and blogs, it does not necessarily lead to the public's consistent exposure to that agenda.''^ It is highly probable that people are exposed to a stable agenda because news from new and old media is the main source of information regardless of news carrier. Nevertheless, it is still possible that people tune out news channels in favor of entertainment media and that the homogeneous agenda carmot reach the audience. Given the homogeneous agenda in mainstream and new media, whether the public's exposure to the agenda is stable should be tested empirically in future studies. The emergence of new communication technologies has produced both optimistic and pessimistic views of the political future. Optimists predict that interactive or two-way communication empowers people to select their own agenda, whereas pessimists argue that a fragmented audience will no longer be able to converse on the same social issues and to reach consensus on them. These apparently contradictory arguments are both based on the assumption of a heterogeneous media agenda to which people are mostly exposed. The findings in this study do not support the heterogeneity hypothesis. Nevertheless, the results do not suggest homogeneity of the media agenda will continue indefinitely. The phenomenon of new technologies is an ongoing process. Constant monitoring of this changing phenomenon will contribute to better understanding of communication in the Internet age.
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NOTES 1. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Cambridge: Blackwell Books, 1996); Cass Sunstein, Repuhlic.com (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Steven H. Chaffee and Miriam J. Metzger, "The End of Mass Communication?" Mass Communication & Society 4 (autumn 2001): 365-79. 2. Maxwell E. McCombs, "A Look at Agenda-Setting: Past, Present and Future," Journalism Studies 6 (August 2005): 543-57. 3. Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, "The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media," Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (summer 1972): 176-87. 4. Maxwell E. McCombs, Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004). 5. Chaffee and Metzger, "The End of Mass Communication?"; John Havick, "The Impact of the Internet on a Television-Based Society," Technology in Society 22 (April 2000): 273-87. 6. James G. Webster and Patricia F. Phalen, The Mass Audience: Rediscovering the Dominant Model (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1997); Sunstein, Republic.com. 7. Sunstein, Republic.com, 48. 8. W. Russell Neuman, The Future of the Mass Audience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); W. Lance Bennett, "The UnCivic Culture: Communication, Identity, and the Rise of Lifestyle Politics," PS: Political Science and Politics 31 (December 1998): 740-61; Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 9. Neuman, The Future of the Mass Audience, 167. 10. Elihu Katz, "And Deliver Us from Segmentation," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 546 (July 1996): 22-33. 11. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Bruce Bimber, "The Internet and Political Transformation: Populism, Community, and Accelerated Pluralism," Polity 31 (autumn 1998): 133-60; Andrew L. Shapiro, The Control Revolution (New York: Public Affairs, 1999); Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); Sunstein, Republic.com. 12. Chaffee and Metzger, "The End of Mass Communication?" 374. 13. McCombs, "A Look at Agenda-Setting: Past, Present and Future," 544-45. 14. Jeongsub Lim, "A Cross-Lagged Analysis of Agenda Setting among Online News Media," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 83 (summer 2006): 298-312. 15. Marilyn Roberts, Wayne Wanta, and Tzong-Horng Dzwo, "Agenda Setting and Issue Salience Online," Communication Research 29 (August 2002): 452-65; Byoungkwan Lee, Karen M. Lancendorfer, and Ki Jung Lee, "Agenda-Setting and the Internet: The Intermedia Influence of Internet Bulletin Boards on Newspaper Coverage of the 2000 General Election in South Korea, " Asian Journal of Communication
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15 (March 2005): 57-71. 16. D. Charles Whitney and Lee B. Becker, "Keeping the Gates for Gatekeepers - the Effects of Wire News, " Journalism Quarterly 59 (spring 1982): 60-65. 17. Stephen D. Reese and Lucig H. Danielian, "Intermedia Influence and the Drug Issue: Converging on Cocaine," in Communication Campaigns about Drugs, ed. Pamela Shoemaker (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1989), 29-46. 18. Roberts, Wanta, and Dzwo, "Agenda Setting and Issue Salience Online"; Lee, Lancendorfer, and Lee, "Agenda-Setting and the Internet: The Intermedia Influence of Internet Bulletin Boards on Newspaper Coverage of the 2000 General Election in South Korea"; Lim, "A CrossLagged Analysis of Agenda Setting among Online News Media." 19. "You've Got Blog," The New Yorker, November 13, 2000,102. 20. Pew Internet and American Life Project, "The State of Blogging," January 2005, available at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_ blogging_data.pdf (accessed May 20, 2007). 21. Jens F. Jensen, "Interactivity: Tracing a News Concept in Media and Communication Studies," Nordicom Review 19 (June 1998): 185-204; Sally J. McMillan, "A Four-Part Model of Cyber-Interactivity: Some CyberPlaces Are More Interactive Than Others," New Media & Society 4 (June 2002): 271-91. 22. Stephen D. Reese, Lou Rutigliano, Kideuk Hyun, and Jaekwan Jeong, "Mapping the Blogosphere: Professional and Citizen-Based Media in the Global News Arena,' Journalism 8 (August 2007): 235-61. 23. Reese et al., "Mapping the Blogosphere: Professional and CitizenBased Media in the Global News Arena." 24. Mark Tremayne, Nan Zheng, Jae Kook Lee, and Jaekwan Jeong, "Issue Publics on the Web: Applying Network Theory to the War Blogosphere," Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (October 2006): 290-310. 25. "Blog-Gate: Yes, CBS Screwed up Badly in 'Memogate' but So Did Those Who Covered the Affair," Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2005, 30. 26. Susan C. Herring, Inna Kouper, John C. Paolillo, Lois Ann Scheidt, Michael Tyworth, Peter Welsch, Elijah Wright, and Ning Yu, "Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis 'From the Bottom Up'" (paper presented at the Thirty-Eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Los Alamitos, 2005). 27. Herring et al., "Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis Trom the Bottom up.'" 28. Ravi Kumar, Jasmine Novak, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Andrew Tomkins, "Structure and Evolution of Blogspace," Communications of the ACM 47 (December 2004): 35-39. 29. Herring et al., "Conversations in the Blogosphere: An Analysis 'From the Bottom up.'" 30. Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance, "The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election: Divided They Blog" (paper presented at the Third International Workshop in Link Discovery, Chicago, IL, 2005).
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31. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society; Putnam, Bowling Alone; Bimber, "The Internet and Political Transformation: Populism, Community, and Accelerated Pluralism"; Shapiro, The Control Revolution; Sunstein, Republic.com. 32. Reese et al, "Mapping the Blogosphere: Professional and CitizenBased Media in the Global News Arena." , 33. It was reported that the blog readership increased by 58% between February 2004 and November 2004. This suggests that the number of blogs and discourse on the blogosphere exponentially grew during the campaign. See Pew, "The State of Blogging." 34. Adamic and Glance, "The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election: Divided They Blog"; Reese et al., "Mapping the Blogosphere: Professional and Citizen-Based Media in the Global News Arena"; Tremayne et al., "Issue Publics on the Web: Applying Network Theory to the War Blogosphere. " 35. For example, Reese and Danielian, "Intermedia Influence and the Drug Issue: Converging on Cocaine"; Whitney and Becker, "Keeping the Gates for Gatekeepers - the Effects of Wire News. " 36. Sean Aday, Steven Livingston, and Maeve Fiebert, "Embedding the Truth: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Objectivity and Television Coverage of the Iraq War," The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 10 (winter 2005): 3-21. 37. Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections, 273. 38. The 2004 ANES codes respondents' answers to the question into twelve different categories. Domestic issues related to welfare such as health care and education fall into "Social welfare." "Agriculture" includes issues related to farm economy, food shortage, and subsidies. "Natural resources" deals with use and preservation of natural resources, environment protection, and development. "Labor" is about issues related to labor and union-management problems. "Racial problems" is about general issues related to race. "Technology" is about issues specific to science and technology. "Public order" deals with issues regarding order in society such as crimes, narcotics, abortion, and homosexuality. "Economy and Business" is about issues specific to people's economic life such as taxes, inflation, and international trade. "Foreign affairs" is about issues related to international relations except economic ones. War in Iraq is coded into this category. "National defense" deals with defense issues in general such as defense budget, draft, and nuclear war. "Functioning of government" is about issues related to appropriateness of government works. People's trust in politics and candidates' campaign are also included in this category. "Non-political" deals with all other things unrelated to political or public affairs. Entertainment and sports are included in this category. 39. Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the Marketplace of Ideas," Journal of Communication 43 (spring 1993): 58-67. 40. William A. Scott, "Reliability of Content Analysis: The Case of Nominal Scale Coding," Public Opinion Quarterly 19 (autumn 1955): 321THE EFFECT OF THE /NTERNET ON HOMOCENEITY OF THE MEDIA AGENDA

25. 41. Daniel Riffe, Stephen Lacy, and Frederick G. Fico, Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research (Mahwah: Erlbaum, 1998). 42. McCombs and Shaw, "The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media"; Roberts, Wanta, and Dzwo, "Agenda Setting and Issue Salience Online. " 43. McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the Marketplace of Ideas." 44. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this point. 45. An anonymous reviewer raised this point. I thank her or him for the valuable comment.

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