Jon Stewart might not consider himself a journalist, but that doesn’t mean researchers don’t treat him like one. Studies have indicated that Jon Stewart ranked fourth among journalists who are most admired, tied with Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and cable host Anderson Cooper. Regular viewers of the Daily show score high on knowledge of current affairs, probably because The Daily Show acts as a supplement to other news sources not people’s sole source of news.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism recently studied a year’s worth of Daily Shows and found that the news agenda for the show mirrors that of cable news talk shows. The authors of the study also argued that its choice of topics, its use of archived news footage to show manipulations by public figures and it tendency toward pointed satire makes it a variation of journalism in the Russell Baker, Art Buchwald and H.L Mencken tradition.

Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert are must viewing for me. While I would say my knowledge of current affairs would be much more limited if they were my only source of news, I would say that Jon Stewart’s way of skewering political and media officials to provide me additional insight into the news. How many of you are Jon Stewart fans or members of the Colbert nation? What, if anything do you learn from watching the show?

Kaye Sweetster, Guy Golan and Wayne Wanta examined the intermedia agenda setting effects of candidate blogs, network news coverage and Website ads in the 2004 campaign in the most recent issue (April-June 2008) of Mass Communication and Society. They found that blogs followed the media agenda more that it influenced it. However, both relationships were significant. The candidate blogs reacted to coverage in the media, but it was also clear that the media went to the candidates’ blogs for news and information. One clear influence of blogs is that they reduce the time lag between intermedia effects as blogs often post reactions to stories the same day they appear. Earlier studies have attributed even more intermedia agenda setting power to blogs, noting that blogs often raise issues ignored by the mainstream media. They cause a buzz and the traditional media pick up on the issue and publicize it to a wider audience. It will be curious to see studies of the 2008 campaign to see the degree to which the role of blogs have changed, particularly in light of the rise of social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube as campaigning devices.

As a Western journalism professor steeped in the First Amendment, I found it jarring to watch television news and suddenly see stories on Olympic protests blacked out. I was equally surprised when I talked to Chinese students and professors who seemed to be not terribly concerned about government control of the media and indeed directed their anger at Western coverage of their country. My personal experiences were recently confirmed by a study of Chinese citizens conducted by the Markle foundation that found that 84 percent of Chinese citizens surveyed thought the Internet should be controlled and 87 percent thought it was the government that should do it. Only 3 in 10 respondents considered the Internet a reliable source of information and three-quarters found information on government sites reliable as opposed to 46 percent for established media. About 93 percent of Chinese Internet users thought that much of Internet content was unsuitable for children and they were concerned about Internet addiction, pornography and privacy issues. The author of the report, Guo Liang, said that much of the public’s concern for the Internet may have resulted from extensive coverage of the negative aspects of the Internet in the government-controlled media. Much of the coverage involved personal stories, many of them about the young, such as students admitted to prestigious universities and later being expelled because of their Internet addiction.

I think we in the West share an assumption that while governments may be different, all people share the same belief in the need for a free and unfettered media. Certainly the Markle study shows this is not the case, even if the Internet fears are fanned by the stat- controlled Chinese media.

Michael Scott, regional manager for Dunder Mifflin on the show “The Office,” commented that because people from all over the world can write on any subject, that you know Wikipedia provides you the very best information. Others are not so sure. Wikipedia, by its own admission, has articles that contain errors and that some writers have an agenda in posting and may therefore put misleading or inaccurate information. Proponents argue that because of the process of the open space system in which disputes between authors are settled by a process of voting where authors involved and other interested parties can discuss the problem between themselves until the truth emerges, that Wikipedia will become more reliable as time emerges.

When researcher Thomas Chesney  surveyed 258 academics about Wikipedia for a study in First Monday he found that while experts judged Wikipedia more credible than nonexperts, overall Wikipedia was only judged moderately credible (a 3 on a 7-point scale).

More recently, Alexander Halavais and Derek Lackaff explored a different question for Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication : How representative is Wikipedia? They did two studies comparing topics in Wikipedia first to the distribution of books published and second to the distribution of topics in three field-specific academic encyclopedias. Because topics are driven by the interest of the users, they found some topics such as music are overrepresented, while other topics such as fine arts, medicine and law are underrepresented. However, they conclude that even in least covered areas, because of its sheer size and ever-changing content that it does well in terms of representativeness.

How much faith should we put in Wikipedia and how comprehensive do you believe it is as a source of information?

I always feel like it’s Christmas time when the Project for Excellence in Journalism releases its annual State of the News Media report. This year did not disappoint. Several of the main conclusions related directly to online journalism:

1. News is shifting from being a product to becoming a service: PEJ argues that a major role of journalists must be to “help citizens find what they are looking for, react to it, sort it, shape news coverage and–probably the most important and least developed–give them tools to make sense of and use the information for themselves”

2. A news website is no longer a final destination but also a gateway to other places: Searching has become the predominant paradigm so that every page of a website is its own front page, and each piece of content “competes… with other information on that topic linked to by blogs, digged by user news sites, sent in e-mails, or appearing in searches.” Therefore as much as half of every Web page should be devoted to helping people find what they want on the rest of the site or on the Web.

3. The prospects for user-created content appears more limited even among citizen sites and blogs: The PEJ reports that while news people believe that citizen input is valuable in terms of new ideas, sources comments and to a lesser degree pictures and video, most citizen news posts are less valuable, with little of it new or verifiable. While PEJ acknowledges that citizen-produced news sites and blogs are becoming more important, such sites typically do not allow citizens to post information to the sites, limiting their contributions to comments on its own material.

Do you agree with the conclusions of the PEJ in its State of the News Media report?

In an effort to reach young readers, Poynter reports that several news organizations, notably the New York Times, ABC and NPR, have partnered with Facebook. The New York Times Facebook Fan page has a news quiz of five questions each day based on stories on New York Times online. ABC features Electon Pulse polls and allows Facebook readers to register support for candidates and follow ABC correspondents through updates. Facebook makes it easy to upload audio and video. NPR has taken advantage of this and allows Facebook users to upload podcasts. I think this is a good direction for the news industry. News organizations are realizing that to succeed, that news needs to be a conversation between users and the media. What do you think about news organizations relying on Facebook?

I just returned from a delightful 12 days in China. I had a chance to talk to a few journalism classes during my visit. Students in both Beijing and Shanghai criticized coverage of the Tibet crisis, wondering why the Western media, which is supposed to be objective, rarely provided the Chinese government perspective. I argued that no media are completely objective; journalists have their own values and they live in a society with values that influence what facts they choose to represent reality. Criticism of the Tibetan crisis reflected a general frustration of how the Chinese people are covered. I told the students I thought their frustration was legitimate. Americans, because we are so isolated, do not have a good understanding of other cultures and are prone to judge the people of a country by their type of government. I wish all Americans had the opportunity to visit China as I did. I have never been treated as warmly or as well as I was during my time in Beijing, Lanzhou and Shanghai. Thank you all for making my trip so memorable.

This is part II of an examination of results from Pew Research’s study of the media in the 2oo8 presidential campaign:

More than two-thirds of those surveyed by Pew said they would prefer news without a point of view while less than a quarter said they preferred news that supports their own opinion. What source they relied on did not influence the results. Fox News viewers were just as likely to say they want their news without spin than those who read newspapers.

These results may sound comforting to democratic theorists who argue that people need to seek out different perspectives to make deliberative decisions. However, what people say may not be what they do. A recent review of the selective exposure literature in Social and Personality Compass suggests that evidence of selective exposure is increasing, not decreaing. A study conducted by myself and colleagues Shannon Bichard and Weiwu Zhang that will be presented at ICA asked people what type of political website they would most likely visit: one that supported their views, one that presents a balanced view and those that challenged their views. The plurality said they preferred to visit sites that supported their political views. What people say that want in political information, then, may not match what they actually seek out.

Pew Internet, in a recent study of Internet use in campaign 2008, noted the growing importance of social network sites in the campaign. More than a third (37%) of those 18-24 said they had gotten information about the campaign from social network sites, although only 8 percent said they signed up as a friend for one of the candidates. While social network sites trail traditional media sites and portal ones, 3 percent said they got their campaign news from Myspace and 2 percent listed YouTube–more than who listed either USA Today or the Washington Post. What does it say about voters in the 2008 election that they prefer MySpace to the Washington Post for information on the campaign?

While several of my academic friends have reported being driven to distraction by the clicking and dinging sounds of people instant messaging and text messaging in class, a recent study suggests that those who frequently instant message report that it does not interrupt production at work and that heavy users are more likely to see it as an aid rather than a hindrance to workplace production. R. Kelly Garrett and James N. Danziger report in the most recent issue of Journal of Computer Mediated Communication that contrary popular perceptions of instant messaging, using IM in the workplace reduces interruption. The authors claim, “Employees can engage in briefer, more frequent interactions in order to get quick answers to work-related questions with minimal disruption, to participate in loose, flexible collaboration, and to coordinate more intense interactions to protect time on task for higher-order activities.” Also frequent IMers may consider that instant messages that are relevant to the task at hand might not be perceived as disruptions and indeed may help them get information they need quicker. I don’t think this will make me any more sympathetic, though, when I hear students IMing or text messaging instead of paying attention in class.