Jumbos pride themselves on being informed, aware and politically active. As a university devoted to civic engagement with a large focus on international relations, Tufts encourages its students to stay aware of current events in the country and throughout the world.
According to a new study by Nielsen//NetRatings, though, an increasing number of Americans are getting their news from informal blogs rather than newspapers, newspaper Web sites or news aggregators like Google News or Yahoo News. The study found that traffic to news blogs rose by 210 percent last year, while traffic to newspaper Web sites rose by nine percent.
While the increase is encouraging for bloggers nationwide, Director of Communications and Media Studies Julie Dobrow said there are both pros and cons when students use news blogs to stay informed.
"One of the things I think is really interesting about news blogs is the question of who's writing them," she said. "It's an opportunity for so-called citizen journalists to get involved, and it's an opportunity for folks who have been outside of the mainstream news organizations to be reporting news."
"Some of the cautions are about who's writing, who's posting this information," she continued. "Are they credible sources? As a consumer of news, I would want to know who's writing this stuff - does the person have an axe to grind? Does the person have some kind of political affiliation?"
According to the study, traffic to the top 10 newspaper blogs more than tripled last year, peaking at 3.8 million in December. At Tufts, though, many students tended to agree with Dobrow, favoring more well-respected news sources over blogs.
"I've come across them, but I don't rely on them," sophomore Stephanie Tsui said. "If I was to read about the news, I'd pick up a newspaper or go to its Web site."
Tsui said the lack of credibility associated with blogs - and the increasingly easy online access to newspaper articles - discourages her from trusting them.
"What's important is who's writing the blog," she said. "If I was to write a paper, I couldn't source [news blogs] because I couldn't be sure they're credible."
"I would only use news blogs as a way to get different opinions," she added. "It's an accountability issue."
Junior Ellen Aiken agreed.
"I don't use new blogs at all," she said. "I check them occasionally, but ... my homepage is the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times."
According to Dobrow, those sources are much less likely than news blogs to publish biased, false or incomplete information.
"We haven't developed the same sort of vetting system [for blogs] that we have for a mainstream source of news," Dobrow said. "For a story to get on the evening news or to be in the New York Times ... it goes through some sort of process. Blogging is a whole new endeavor."
But Dobrow emphasized that there is still value in news blogs as sources that transcend the financial and institutional boundaries of mainstream media.
"I think there's an awful lot of potential there for different voices to be heard [on blogs] ... and also a potential for a lot more dialogue to happen around news," she said. "I would just have cautions about where these sources are coming from."
Sophomore Matthew Christie said he thinks a lot of Jumbos get their news from blogs, but that personally he only uses them for entertainment.
"I'd say probably 60 to 75 percent of people get at least some of their news from news blogs, but it's not going to be their only source of news," he said. "It just offers a different perspective than what they might get in other places ... I'm really interested in technology blogs ... just things that are interesting to me, not important national news."
Aiken agreed, saying many of her friends rely on blogs to keep up with politics.
"I'm a political science major, and I have friends who use blogs," she said. "I think we're representative of this new, college-age generation that has kind of popularized the news blog in general."
But Aikens said she doesn't use blogs herself for news.
"I haven't gotten into it, but I see pros and cons to both [newspapers and blogs]," she said. "If I want to look at a particular issue - like the election is coming up - then I might go to a blog."
In addition to the overall rise in blog traffic, the study also found that a significantly higher number of men are reading news blogs and newspaper Web sites than women. According to the study, the overall unique readership of the top ten news blogs is 66 percent male and just 34 percent female, while newspaper Web site readership is 60 percent male and 40 percent female. And the gap is increasing: Last year, male traffic to news blogs went up by 226 percent, while female traffic went up by 183 percent.
According to Aiken, though, the gap doesn't exist at Tufts.
"Here at Tufts, women are just as politically active and just as aware of current events as men are," she said. "It must be something to do with female attitudes toward the particular source of the news blog."
Christie suggested that men may be more curious about new, technological methods of getting information.
"Of all the guys I know and all the girls I know, the guys are more interested in that kind of thing," he said, pointing out that the men he knows are more interested in technology in general.
Christie said that he doesn't think men are more likely to read the news in general, but that they may just be quicker to do so through blogs.
But Tsui said she didn't think males were merely more quick to adopt modern technology.
"There's probably another reason," she said. "Everybody knows how to use the Internet."
Dobrow warned against putting too much weight on the study, since there was no causality established between gender and Internet use.
"There are a lot of factors that could skew the demographics," she said. "I would want to know more about how the study was done."
"The question about whether news blogs are a reliable source of information is to me a very different question than the question of who reads them," she added.
