Funferal

Blogdex and creating a media agenda

I’ve been playing around with blogdex a little recently. Its an interesting idea – a bit like the Google Zeitgeist, as a friend commented to me – it tracks trends in links from ‘blogs, and as such is able to show the state of ‘the curve’ in the blogosphere.

Of course, it does remove the fun in noting oneself what the next big thing will be, but it mayhelp to solve the problem regarding how disparate sources, such as blogs and other participatory media, can create a media agenda. If blogdex, as I think it might, encorporates a measure of ‘trust’, it can provide a reasonably reliable measure of links.

Naturellment, this still leaves the issue that, as Tim Cavanaugh has noted, “For all the bitching they log about the mainstream media, [bloggers are] wholly dependent upon that very same mainstream media.” – i.e., bloggers, at the moment, are often parasitical in terms of sources. While there is much analysis done in blogs, there is less reportage as we would know it. And such reportage as is included cannot, currently, be tracked by blogdex. Time for a new aggregation tool?