Social Media

A new study finds a proliferation of “citizen media” web sites that fit somewhere on the media spectrum between the street-corner soapbox and the local daily newspaper. While concluding that these grassroots outlets are successful at creating community conversations, the report on this emerging landscape also reveals that many are tenuous, shoestring operations.

Tagging, blogging, and social networking sites allow internet users to search for, catalog, and disseminate information.

More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites.

Some critics have assailed Time magazine’s choice for 2006 Person of the Year in recent days, calling the editors’ selection of “You” with a mirror on the cover gimmicky. But this wasn’t the first unconventional choice for Time’s honor – or the first time a group of people was selected. PEJ takes stock of Time’s past Persons of the Year from 1927 on.

As we've seen during this election season, participating online can also motivate users to participate offline.

More than a third or 35% of online adults create content online, and 57% of teenagers 12-17 make their own content to post to the Web. Younger users and home broadband users are the most avid content creators, and most post their creations online ...

“Web 2.0” has become a catch-all buzzword; the Pew Internet Project and Hitwise provide data to put it in perspective.

In the ninth and last of our summer roundtable discussions on the future of the news media, bloggers and analysts discuss how the Internet is transforming the gathering and delivery of information and also offer their ideas on what traditional news organizations must do to keep pace and remain relevant.

The online version of the Blogger Callback Survey allows some space for written answers, in addition to multiple-choice responses.

A national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers.