Krems.
The second speaker in this EDEM 2010 session is Evgeniya Boklage, whose interest is in the impact of the political blogosphere on communicative transparency. Transparency is crucial for interpersonal communication; it is an existential prerequisite for deliberative processes, too. If we consider the public sphere as a communicative system, the key functions are transparency (input), validation (throughput), and orientation (output), and Evgeniya focusses on the first of these here.
Transparency then is also the system's sensitivity to it environment, and the blogosphere can enhance this - but this is somewhat different from how transparency is operationalised in journalism: where transparency in journalism is about the transparency of the journalistic production process, here the focus is more on empowering citizens by enhancing public discourse and improving the quality of available information.
It is worth noting in this context that the political blogosphere has emerged from an anti-institutional background, and has at times forced mainstream institutions and organisations (not least, journalistic organisations) to explain themselves to democracy - for example through media watchdog blogs or blogs which address topics that are usually absent from mainstream journalistic coverage. ideally, blogs observe the mass media, the political system, and society at large, and enable their users to better navigate the available information.
In this, transparency appears as a constituting element of their work, not simply from their institutional or professional frameworks or imprints; this also forces them to act with great transparency. In fact, this uncensored, uncontrolled, and unmediated approach is both blogs' greatest strength and their greatest weakness, as Rebecca Blood has suggested.
