The Headlines – 25th Sept.

The breaking news of the day is that McCain proposed to postpone Friday’s TV-debate (the first out of four scheduled for this campaign), so that he “would be able to focus on the economy” instead of campaign matters. The news is on the front page of Digg (albeit NOT in the “Elections” but in the more general “Politics” section), it’s also there on Reddit, and Newsvine covers also Obama’s reply to the suggestion on the front page.

Speaking of technical matters, Digg’s blog hinted yesterday that significant changes are to be expected from the site, along the lines of better – increased – personalization, and localization of content. Whether or not this is a good business decision, I have no idea, but I’m guessing those in charge know what they are doing. On the other hand, from the point of view of deliberative democracy, I tend to agree with Sunstein – too much filtering (aka “personalization”) is detrimental. We’ll see soon enough. The headlines, then:

Digg headlines for the weekend (6-8th Sept.)

I’m working on finalizing my reply to Axel Bruns’ article about the networked model of the public sphere. At one point I wasn’t sure if I had time to do the follow-up on headlines, then I made a compromise (if that’s an acceptable excuse). So, the headlines from the previous weekend – but only from Digg this time, I wonder if you can spot a trend there.

Digg: an echo chamber for a few?

One of the charges against social news sites is that they are only seemingly democratic, while in reality they are only used to air the views of the few, most active members of the community. Research conducted by the Wall Street Journal indicated that, indeed, a very small portion of the community members is responsible for the majority of submitted items.

Here is what I found on Digg, focusing on articles that became a.) popular (voted to the front page by the community) and b.) dealing with the (pre-)election campaign in the US.