HW 19: Web of Influence

After reading “Web of Influence”, I found out a lot of important information that helped me to understand more about what the blogosphere represents and does to help the mainstream media. The blogosphere is one way for the mainstream media to keep an eye out to see if there are any stories that should be covered to a greater extent. Although some readers may object to this and say that the blogosphere is such a wide range of topics it would be almost impossible to find out what is important and what’s not, I simply state that the more a subject is talked about in the blogosphere the more noticeable it becomes to the mainstream media. In “Web of Influence” it uses the example of Annie Jacobsen who wrote a blog about unusual activity at the airport involving eight Middle Eastern men. This story demonstrates that although it may seem unreasonable to be suspicious about foreign passengers, you can never be too safe when you are dealing with people’s lives. So in other words the blogosphere, although it is wide and ranges many different topics, does attract the mainstream media to important issues that are not necessarily being covered as well as they should be. They almost work together in helping each other grow and feeding off each other for stories and topics.