Based on the three features necessary to the definition of what a public sphere is, Baoill identifies the strengths and weaknesses of how public debate is structured in the social space furnished by blogs.
The second feature: Rational Debate of Any Topic Until Consensus Is Achieved
The second feature: Rational Debate of Any Topic Until Consensus Is Achieved
1. The quality of debate on blogs – concentration is on temporary issues; there is a concern that blogging is a mere distraction, not something which provides concrete insight.
The importance that blogs place on breaking news, and on temporary, fleeting issues is problematic for Baoill because it risks the chance of incorrect information being published before established, well-researched information has been provided.
2. The layout of blogs – because separate comment threads (series of newsgroup messages dealing with the same subject) are used in each post, threads can be very short. After a few comments are posted in one thread, a newer blog post may be created to keep up with the latest, most recent news, and new comments will likely be posted in the new topic's comment thread. This is problematic because it prevents the rational debate required to reach a consensus, which is one of the criteria for Habermas’ public sphere.
3. Incompetence of blog indexes to compile politically balanced blog lists – the blogs dealing with the most popular, current, or acceptable issues are added to the lists of blogs by blog indexes, while other blogs are left behind. For example, blogs dealing with the war in Iraq at one time became very popular, and so blogs dealing with other issues, such as the war in the Congo, were ignored by blog indexes, leaving no room for rational debate about such topics. Topics were therefore not equally represented.
In an article for Wired in 2001, John Coate, founder and former general manager of S.F. Gate, a San Francisco newspaper, said, "[Blogdex] is essentially democratic and routes around big news media. Because it is so decentralized, it seems to be in little danger of being bought and co-opted by the huge news media and thus their filtering and big business agenda will not dominate. And the world will be a better place for it."
4. The disconnect between RSS (RDF Site Summary) feeds – RSS feeds publish information, such as blog comments, news udates, or website articles, “in a stripped down, structured format.” This can negatively affect rational debate in the blogosphere; even though it means readers can browse through a website quickly and easily, on a blog, it means reading via RSS feeds, and responding via web browser. “With this disconnect between reading (in an RSS viewer) and responding (through a web browser) the threshold for interactivity is again raised.”
Baoill, Andrew Ó. "Weblogs and the Public Sphere." Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. 11 Jan. 2008 <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/weblogs_and_the_public_sphere.html>.
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