Poignancy in the US political blogsphere

Purpose – To suggest methods and approaches to the study of relationships between the blogsphere and news, and to show, through a preliminary study, how the blogsphere makes particular political contributions through the manner in which social issues are discussed.Design/methodology/approach – The article provides a set of research questions as well as general methodological approaches to undertake empirical, comparative analysis of the blogsphere and news. It reports on a preliminary study of the contribution of the blogsphere to politics using semantic analysis. Hyperlink analysis of the right‐of‐center US political blogsphere is also provided in a figure.Findings – It was found that the contribution of the blogsphere to political issue formation is distinctive from that of the news, for the blogsphere provides to issues a poignancy not found in the news.Research limitations/implications – The reported study is suggestive of a particular contribution the blogsphere may make to issue formation.Practical ...