The federal election lead-up provides a ringside seat to the bitter battle between bloggers and traditional media for the public's attention, a Queensland University of Technology new media researcher says.
Dr Axel Bruns from QUT's Creative Industries Faculty said the upcoming election would be the last in which the traditional media would be the main source of electoral news, comment and analysis.
"We are one election behind the US in terms of the influence of online media - including bloggers as opinion makers," Dr Bruns, co-editor of the book Uses of Blogs, said.
"In the last US election, bloggers were invited to cover the Democrat and Republican national conferences, and played a crucial role in mobilising grassroots support for candidates," Dr Bruns said.
"In Australia, bloggers, some of them professional political analysts and election pollsters, provide a different perspective from that of the mainstream media - and many journalists are flustered by these new expert commentators."
A blogger himself, Dr Bruns will speak at Australia's first user-generated conference on the legal, business, and political aspects of blogs to be held at QUT's Kelvin Grove campus on Friday, September 28.
At the free one-day conference, Navigating the Blogosphere, Dr Bruns will speak about the rise of citizen journalism in the blogosphere and how this is affecting the political mediascape.
"Traditional media are fighting back in a number of ways," Dr Bruns.
"They denigrate bloggers as amateurs who provide low-grade and untrustworthy content, they try to incorporate elements of citizen journalism such as online discussions, or they gather material from bloggers and publish that."
At the conference, Dr Bruns will be joined by well-known, blogging political commentators including Senator Andrew Bartlett of the Barlett Diaries, Mark Bahnisch of Larvatus Prodeo, and Tim Dunlop of Road to Surfdom and The Australian's Blogocracy blogs.
Speakers' topics will include defamation in blogs, borrowing from blogs, business and corporate blogging, blogging and education, and how to build a better blog as well as some blog forecasting.
For more information go to http://www.freedomtodiffer.com/blogoz/ or email Peter Black on p2.black@qut.edu.au.
Media contact: Niki Widdowson, QUT media officer, 07 3138 1841 or n.widdowson@qut.edu.au.
** High res pic of Dr Bruns available for media use.
